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FOSDICK, H.M. and L.N. TAPPAN. Plan of the Cities of Denver, Auraria and Highland. Jefferson Terr. Denver, 1859.
Lithographed map (545 x 699 mm) by Meisell Bros., Boston, watermarked COLORADO BOND (tissue reinforced along folds on verso). With original green blindstamped cloth covers.
THE FIRST MAP OF DENVER, AURARIA AND HIGHLAND, SIGNED BY FOSDICK on the map: "HM Fosdick Engineer Dec. 1st 1859." Placer gold discoveries along the South Platte in July 1858 triggered the 1859 gold rush and lured prospectors by the tens of thousands. William H. Larimer, Jr. named the town when he and his party organized the Denver City Town Company on November 22, 1858. Larimer, a town promoter from Kansas, occupied largely vacant land across Cherry Creek, northeast of Auraria. He named the town to flatter James W. Denver, the former governor of Kansas Territory. The names Auraria and Denver vied for dominance for over a year, but Denver won and on 6 April 1860 the villages merged.
The map shows the clear distinctions of the grid layouts of Denver to the north, Auraria to the south of the Cherry Creek and Highlands across the Platte River to the east in a scale of 800 feet to the inch. The map itself had a somewhat mysterious adolescence, according to Graff: "It was the subject of a long search by the Government, but remained undiscovered until 1897. In that year, a clerk in the U.S. Land Office, acting under instructions from Washington, finally located the map in the vaults of the Land office in Denver and the rediscovery was announced on July 23" (Graff 1386). The map is EXTREMELY RARE, not in Phillips Maps, Streeter or Wagner-Camp-Becker.
Lithographed map (545 x 699 mm) by Meisell Bros., Boston, watermarked COLORADO BOND (tissue reinforced along folds on verso). With original green blindstamped cloth covers.
THE FIRST MAP OF DENVER, AURARIA AND HIGHLAND, SIGNED BY FOSDICK on the map: "HM Fosdick Engineer Dec. 1st 1859." Placer gold discoveries along the South Platte in July 1858 triggered the 1859 gold rush and lured prospectors by the tens of thousands. William H. Larimer, Jr. named the town when he and his party organized the Denver City Town Company on November 22, 1858. Larimer, a town promoter from Kansas, occupied largely vacant land across Cherry Creek, northeast of Auraria. He named the town to flatter James W. Denver, the former governor of Kansas Territory. The names Auraria and Denver vied for dominance for over a year, but Denver won and on 6 April 1860 the villages merged.
The map shows the clear distinctions of the grid layouts of Denver to the north, Auraria to the south of the Cherry Creek and Highlands across the Platte River to the east in a scale of 800 feet to the inch. The map itself had a somewhat mysterious adolescence, according to Graff: "It was the subject of a long search by the Government, but remained undiscovered until 1897. In that year, a clerk in the U.S. Land Office, acting under instructions from Washington, finally located the map in the vaults of the Land office in Denver and the rediscovery was announced on July 23" (Graff 1386). The map is EXTREMELY RARE, not in Phillips Maps, Streeter or Wagner-Camp-Becker.