Mapping And Imagination In The Great Basin2005

"The Great Basin was the last region of continental North America to be explored and mapped, and it remained largely a mystery to European Americans until well into the nineteenth century. In Mapping and Imagination in the Great Basin, geographer-historian Richard Francaviglia shows how the Great Basin gradually emerged from its "cartographic silence" as terra incognita and how this fascinating process both paralleled the development of the sciences of surveying, geology, hydrology, and cartography, and reflected the changing geopolitical aspirations of the European colonial powers and the United States." "Francaviglia's remarkable interdisciplinary account of the mapping of the Great Basin combines an exciting chronicle of the exploration of the region with a history of the art and...