The site of the historic Empire Mine, now a state historic park in Grass Valley, California
1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.
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1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.
1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.
1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.
"President Abraham Lincoln signed the Pacific Railroad Act into law on July 1, 1862. The act gave two companies, the Union Pacific Railroad and the Central Pacific Railroad, responsibility for completing the transcontinental railroad. The Union Pacific was to lay track westward from a point near Omaha, Nebraska, toward Ogden, Utah; the Central Pacific was to build eastward from Sacramento, California. The Union Pacific began construction on December 2, 1863. This map, submitted to Secretary of Interior James Harlan on September 18, 1865, by Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Simpson of the Army Corps of Engineers, shows the different routes between the Missouri River and the Platte Valley in Nebraska surveyed for the Union Pacific. Based on a map submitted by Silas Seymour, consulting engineer to the Union Pacific, the map shows five alternative routes with probable connections to existing railroads. Also shown are relief by hachures, county boundaries, drainage, vegetation, and roads. Nebraska was at this time a territory; it became the 37th state on March 1, 1867. Under the authorizing legislation, the railroad was not to have grades or curves exceeding the maximums on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, the first U.S. railroad to cross the Appalachians. This profile shows the careful attention paid by the engineers to the steepness of the grades on alternative routes considered for the line. The horizontal scale shown is one mile to one inch (1.61 kilometers to 2.54 centimeters), and the vertical scale is 60 feet to one inch (18.28 meters to 2.54 centimeters). The profile accompanied a topographic map showing five different routes between the Missouri River and the Platte Valley in Nebraska, which was part of a report submitted to Secretary of Interior James Harlan by Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Simpson of the Army Corps of Engineers." World Digital Library. Detailed map of Nebraska showing relief by hachures, drainage, vegetation, roads, and railroads.
Map of Pennsylvania from Philadelphia north to the New York boundary and west to Williamsport. Shows county boundaries, drainage, coal field, important cities, and the existing and proposed railroads. Chartered in 1835 as the Little Schuylkill and Susequehanna Railroad.
Map of Pennsylvania and parts of adjacent states showing the railroad network, cities, towns, railroad stations, canals, and coal fields.
1929 - Jul 1950 Vol. 9. 105 sheet(s). 008. Other places as they appear on original: Tarrant City, Homewood, Hollywood, Territory South of Birmingham known as Shades Valley.
Shows river valleys, indicates cities and towns, county boundaries, and the railroad network by distinguishing colors. "Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865 by G.W. & C.B. Colton in the Clerks Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York." Available also through the Library of Congress Web site as a raster image. Acquisitions control no. 2006-15
Map of the north-central and northeastern United States showing drainage, relief by hachures, place names, and state boundaries. Chartered as the Auburn and Eel River Valley Rail Road on March 8, 1853. Name changed August 3, 1853.
Outline map of the eastern United states including Cuba and the Gulf of Mexico. Shows the railroad network and steamship routes. Indicates the railroad land grant and the coal and iron deposits in Alabama. Distances from Washington, D.C., to New Orleans, La. are shown below the title. Chartered in 1853 and 1854. Consolidated with the Wills Valley Railroad, forming the Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad.
Very detailed map of the continental United States and parts of Canada and Mexico including drainage, international, state and county boundaries, cities and towns, canals, roads, trails, railroads, and railroads under construction. This map is very similar in cartography, content and scale to the maps which make up Rand, McNally & Co's Business Atlas containing large scale maps of each state and territory of the Great Mississippi Valley and Pacific Slope, Accompanied by a New and Original Compilation and Ready Reference Index, Showing in Detail the Entire Railroad System...Together with all Post Offices, Railroad Stations and Villages...(Chicago, 1876-77). [From published bibliography]
Printed topographic strip map with manuscript annotations to show the geologic structure along the route of the railroad. The Alexandria and the Chesapeake and Ohio canals and stage stable for horses used on the Piedmont stage route to North Carolina are also indicated. The Orange and Alexandria Railroad Company was founded in 1848 to divert hinterland products away from Baltimore and Richmond to Alexandria, Va. Construction was begun in 1850 and was completed to Culpeper in 1852 and to Gordonsville in 1854, from where the rail line connected with the Virginia Central. Warrenton, originally on a proposed earlier route, was linked by a branch line in 1853. The Manassas Gap Railroad, the first rail line to cross the Blue Ridge Mountains, was completed to Strasburg in 1854 and joined Alexandria with the upper Piedmont Valley.
"The United States gained vast territories in the West through the Mexican War of 1846-48 and the 1846 Oregon Treaty with Great Britain. By the early 1850s, government and commercial interests were debating the possibilities of building a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific. The Army Appropriations Act of 1853 provided for the completion of railroad surveys to determine possible routes. This map, issued in 1858 by Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, depicts the United States west of the Mississippi on the eve of the Civil War. California and Texas were at this time the only Western states. Western regions initially became part of the United States as military departments, which only later were organized into territories and, eventually, states. The map uses colors to show the military departments and Indian lands. Brown flags indicate military establishments. In the lower right are listed all of the important surveys and expeditions that contributed to the mapping of the West, from the Lewis and Clark Expedition of 1804 to a survey of roads between the Sacramento and Columbia Rivers undertaken by two army officers in 1855. The routes of these expeditions are shown on the map. The map was compiled by then-Lieutenant Gouverneur K. Warren of the Army Topographical Engineers and a future Union general in the Civil War. Davis later became president of the Confederacy and a bitter adversary of President Abraham Lincoln under whose leadership, ironically, work on the transcontinental railroad began in 1862." World Digital Library.
Shows drainage, cities and towns, and railroads in color.
Map covering the southwestern states but extending from Chicago to the Pacific Coast.
Township and county map showing relief by hachures, cities and towns, and the railroad network distinguished by color and name.
Township and county map showing drainage, cities and towns, and the railroads of Nebraska.
Map of Pennsylvania between Philadelphia and Harrisburg showing drainage, cities, towns, completed railroads, and the proposed Pinegrove Lancaster R.R. and the Phoenixville Cornwall R.R.