Mt Whitney Zone Forums General Discussion 1907 Mount Whitney Topographic Map

One of our members, Paul, from Oakland, has a fine topographic map of the Mt Whitney area, originally printed in 1907. His copy says "Edition of 1907, reprinted 1927."  He passed it along to Doug Sr, who had it scanned. Bill Stone put it on his ftp server.

I have received permission from the gentlemen to make the map available here. The original Whitney Portal Store thread is here:  Map of the Eastern Sierra

Here is the link to a 34MB PDF image of both sides of the map:
      MT. WHITNEY, CALIF.
Note that due to the size of the file, it could take a while to display -- 30 seconds to several minutes!

The map is quite interesting. Scale is 1/125000, or 1/2 inch to the mile. The map covers the area from Taboose Pass on the north and Pinchot Pass -- but no John Muir Trail! The bottom of the map shows Crabtree Meadow and Mt Langley. Even a corner of Owens Lake (It was full of water then!)

Here's a clip from the Whitney - Lone Pine area. Quality is not as good as the .pdf image. (Click on the image for the full size).
On the far right, you can see the map location of the 1872 Lone Pine earthquake.

                   

Enjoy!

Interesting!

This shows the original trail for the MMWT: Up Whitney Pass, and along the crest.

The trail from Cottonwood is there, but where it goes up from Guitar lake, it connects up to the MMWT NORTH of Mt Muir! I didn't know about that!

Interesting also is that it shows the elevation to be 14,501.

Quite a few California historical topos are available for viewing in a variety of vintages at:

http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/CA/CA_125k/30_minute3.html

Select a map and use the viewer to zoom in to areas of interest.

Dale B. Dalrymple

Dale, I found the map there, but the viewer from LizardTech is a 32MB download and install. ....did I do something wrong, or is that what I need to do to view the .sid map files?

Hmmm.... I just found that I could embed their map viewing applet right here, and enlarge it to 800 x 700.

Here it is:

Tips: Note the symbol/icons on the top left frame. Clicking on one sets subsequent mouse actions to that "tool". The + or - indicate zoom-in or out tool. (Example: Click the +, then click on the map multiple times to zoom in multiple levels.)

Click on the hand, and then use the mouse to click and drag the map to view different areas.

Steve

It's not a great viewer except for it's price and the topos they have.

They say the 1907 Mt Whitney is 6521 by 7961.

Dale B. Dalrymple

Great map. Thanks. Note also that it shows a through trail going down from Charlotte Lake to Bubbs Creek. All of the early trips (Brewer 1863, Brown & LeConte 1890/1900 etc.) all describe going up this route with stock. Guess it was still in use in 1905 & perhaps 1927.

Also note Harrison pass as the standard marked route and no John Muir Trail (Forester; trail ends at Twin Lakes and goes out over Sawmill). LeConte reported going over Harrison in around 1900 with stock. I thought that was the only time with stock, but maybe not. That route STILL shows up as a trail on not-well-edited maps (currently on the ESRI basemaps online).

First written record of Forester being crossed was, I think, about 1905 by a Sierra Club party. They reported it as having been used by sheepherders, but didn't make it sound well used.

Very cool.

g.

> Note also that it shows a through trail going down from Charlotte Lake to Bubbs Creek. All of the early trips (Brewer 1863, Brown & LeConte 1890/1900 etc.) all describe going up this route with stock. Guess it was still in use in 1905 & perhaps 1927.

Mercy!!! I have first-hand knowledge of that route.

In June, '08, I talked to "Some Ranger" at his cabin...



...by Charlotte Lake,


and he thought heading down Charlotte Creek could be done, but we should probably stay on the north side of the creek. Well, at some point the area looked easier on the S side, and it got really bad. But it was too late to cross back due to the steepness of the canyon walls and the deep rushing water.

Here's a boulder field. The downed trees were something else.


It is amazing that they actually had a route through there!

Do you think that occasional burns kept the area more clear than it is now?

I just noticed something else: The UC Berkeley Library map showing the trail down Charlotte Creek is different from the pdf file in the top post in this thread. The pdf file is of the 1927 reprint, while the library version must be the 1907 version.

...Because that Charlotte Creek trail is GONE on the later version. And instead, the later version shows a trail going up Bubbs Creek, through Center Basin, over Junction Pass, and then back over the crest at Shepherd Pass. That trail is missing on the 1907 map.

What a darned action-ready ranger & spouse that photo shows... .

It makes sense that the downstream Charlotte trail was gone by '27. There were no more references to it after 1910 or so that I've seen. Also, sometime in there was a hotel (??) at Junction Meadow, so they must have constructed a trail to there and pushed it farther to Vidette. Same with Junction Pass. That stayed as the JMT until Forester was built in 1933 (??) or so.

Glad you got down it but, yes, it's the north side once you go over the lip. I don't think there is a good route down through the meadows... . Even then, it's hard to imagine getting stock up that route from Bubbs.



A very good point. Very likely. One really good example is Bolton Brown going up Cartridge Creek in 1896 or so and not mentioning brush at all. Said he followed a sketchy trail then just went up by the creek. Now it literally takes 2 hours to go a mile through the 20 ft. high brush, even following the old JMT. Badly in need of a fire.

g.

someone put together a whole bunch of historic topos to view in Google Earth using this kml file
http://www.gelib.com/maps/_NL/historic-topographic-maps.kml

more info here

Ze, It looks like that "Google Earth Topo Overlay - A Mapping Discussion" is your work. Nice!

Why don't you start a new thread about that resource. Maybe you could show how to embed the mapping software in a post here.

I use GMap4 to show MyTopo and Google Terrain view maps on this forum. Including yours would be a nice addition.