Reports of explorations and surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean
This is a government report from the United States War Department, printed in Washington in 1855, documenting surveys for a transcontinental railroad route for the department's engineers and Congress. The pictures show western landscapes in engraved line: conifer forests on a rising slope, a broad river valley between hills, rock-art figures of animals and riders, and Native American tools and weapons. A designer could draw on their dense hatching and their plain documentary layout for a field-survey look.
