A Historical Atlas in Narrative Form

The scientific exploration and documentation of the Pacific Railroad Surveys of the nineteenth century is a subject that has received little attention in historical cartography Of the surveys, the Gunnison-Beckwith expedition produced a particularly intriguing report containing adventure, illustration, and topographic presentation. Despite the historical importance and remarkable content of these reports, which were considered the largest source of geographical information on the West during this era, they remain largely unknown to the public today This article investigates the representation of this significant historical event in an entirely new type of historical atlas, one that breaks traditional conceptions of the atlas as merely a place to locate facts of the past, and instead creatively illuminates history in a narrative form. Inspired by Denis Wood's original notion, I created a narrative atlas; this involved creating an atlas of maps incorporated serially into an atlas so they could be read as a novel, and further structuring the narrative within each map to reflect the cartographic language of the nineteenth century topographic explorers. In so doing, I recreated their world of incorporated illustrations, observations and text. This article demonstrates the use of narrative technique in both atlas organization and cartographic symbolization as a point of departure for envisioning a totally different type of historic cartographic product: an atlas capable of bringing the elements of place, space, time, and narrative together to transport the viewer into the world of the explorer, thus connecting them with the past.