According to an old adage, a place is not discovered until it is mapped.

	Thinking Point
	Every map tells a story. Pick one map in this seminar and write down everything you can glean from the map on three pages. (Maps deliver information efficiently. Converting their information to text involves more words than the simplest map might imply.)

Through impressions of the West in maps from 1540 to 1900, this seminar presents an overview of the mapping of the Amercian West, a process which continues today.

Many minds and hands were involved in the mapping process: the delineator in the map studio; the engraver on copper or stone; the lithographer; the paper maker; the printer/publisher; the colorist; the binder; the book/mapseller; the purchaser or government client; and, of course, the explorer in the field, who often drew on Native American knowledge of the land. New information from explorers or surveyors resulted in revisions or even entirely new maps. Often latching onto the mantle of government authority, commercial mapmakers trumpeted the authoritative federal sources for their particular maps.

Map Division

Map of the United States and Mexico, . . . published . . . under the direction of Col. Carlos Butterfield. New York: Johnson and Browning, 1859. While many government maps are very plain, black-and-white technical productions, this mid-19th-century commercial wall map is alive with state and territorial boundaries (no part of the country is left untouched, or in a "frontier" condition), notes, illustrations and color, used aggressively as a symbol of possession.

This seminar reveals the evolution on paper from an imagined West to a mapped West, seemingly defined yet still a fiction of sorts. Early on, imaginative maps (Session 2) implied an easy route across America to Asia--a land of jewels and spices, to which access overland across Europe and

	Discussion
	How do maps impact our perception of a location?

Western Asia was blocked by the rise of the Ottoman Empire. Once aware of the immensity of the American continent, those in power sought to explore (Session 3) and to map it. The surveying and settlement (Session 4) of the territory west of the Appalachians aggressively changed the face of the land. The discovery and mining (Session 5) of gold, and the continuing desire for access to Asian markets, inspired exploration and improved means of transportation (Session 6) across the continent. The maps here have been organized into five thematic categories, but individual maps often provide information relating to more than one theme, or even all, of them.

Grids of property lines, township surveys, railroad lines, wagon trails, state and county boundaries all criss-crossed the land, in reality and on paper. The trails west are many; the maps show the way.