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SPALDING, Charles C. (mid-nineteenth century). Annals of the City of Kansas: Embracing Full Details of the Trade and Commerce of the Great Western Plains, Together with Statistics of the Agricultural, Mineral and Commercial Resources of the Country West, South and South-West, Embracing Western Missouri, Kansas, The Indian Country, and New Mexico. Kansas City: Van Horn & Abeel, 1858.
8o (220 x 133 mm). Lithographed frontispiece and 6 plates. (Some dampstaining and spotting.) Original brown publisher's cloth, blocked in blind, title gilt-lettered on front cover (some wear to extremities, repairs to ends of spine). Provenance: James Bickford (signature on pastedown, inscription recording his gift to Margaret Cooper; with her signature on verso of plate 3 and pencil note signed Margaret Regan [her married name] dated 1866 on rear free endpaper).
FIRST EDITION OF THE SECOND BOOK PRINTED IN KANSAS. Spalding notes in his preface that he sought to write a "full, detailed and correct" exhibit of the many resources of the region: "I offer it to the public with the assurance that it at least merits one credit not always awarded to books of like import-- it is correct." Spalding describes the western interior of Kansas Territory extending to the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains and the growth of Kansas City. He argues that the Plains are not a desert but a great pasture, rich and fertile and ready for agricultural development. Kansas City was already a conduit for western emigration and the Santa Fe trail, and Spalding argues that with the development of the Trans-Continental Railway and agricultural growth, Kansas City will surpass Chicago as the hub of the United States. Graff 3917; Howes S-805; Sabin 88862; Streeter sale III:1870; Wagner-Camp-Becker 309.
8o (220 x 133 mm). Lithographed frontispiece and 6 plates. (Some dampstaining and spotting.) Original brown publisher's cloth, blocked in blind, title gilt-lettered on front cover (some wear to extremities, repairs to ends of spine). Provenance: James Bickford (signature on pastedown, inscription recording his gift to Margaret Cooper; with her signature on verso of plate 3 and pencil note signed Margaret Regan [her married name] dated 1866 on rear free endpaper).
FIRST EDITION OF THE SECOND BOOK PRINTED IN KANSAS. Spalding notes in his preface that he sought to write a "full, detailed and correct" exhibit of the many resources of the region: "I offer it to the public with the assurance that it at least merits one credit not always awarded to books of like import-- it is correct." Spalding describes the western interior of Kansas Territory extending to the Rocky Mountains, the Great Plains and the growth of Kansas City. He argues that the Plains are not a desert but a great pasture, rich and fertile and ready for agricultural development. Kansas City was already a conduit for western emigration and the Santa Fe trail, and Spalding argues that with the development of the Trans-Continental Railway and agricultural growth, Kansas City will surpass Chicago as the hub of the United States. Graff 3917; Howes S-805; Sabin 88862; Streeter sale III:1870; Wagner-Camp-Becker 309.