Fascinating military survey of the Sacramento Valley undertaken at the height of the Caifornia Gold Rush in 1849. The sites of numerous mines, including Mormon Isla, Karknakas Diggings, and Dry Diggings appear on the map, as do several more generic references to "diggers". The region's early road system is laid out, particularly the emigrants routes by which settlers came to California.



This map was surveyed and drawn by Lieutenant George Horatio Derby of the U.S. Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers. After graduating from West Point Military Academy and serving in the Mexican American War, Derby was assigned to California and tasked with producing surveys of the newly-acquired territory. This map was done whilst accompanying Brigadier General Bennett Riley on a tour of the Sacramento region. It was published by the US Senate in a report from the Secretary of War in 1850, entitled "Topographical Memoir Accompanying Maps of the Sacramento Valley, &c...". Derby spent much of his life in California and became famous as one of the state's earliest published humourists, writing and illustrating comics for the San Diego Herald and other local newspapers under the pseudonym 'Squibob'.



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