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James Dewing, originally from Connecticut, had joined his brother in San Francisco after serving in the Union Army. Picturesque CaliforniaвЂ™sВ treatment of the region would be much more comprehensive, and it was published by a San Francisco firm, with text and many images produced by westerners.

But the earlier work covered only a few areas of the West-the San Francisco region and northern California, the Columbia River Valley, Yellowstone National Park, the Colorado Rockies, and the Grand Canyon-and the writers and artists were travelers from the East.

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Other similarities besides the title were the large format, the variety of media-both wood and steel engravings-and the serial publication (forty-eight parts at fifty cents each).

Appleton and Company published a work illustrating the scenery and cities of the entire country that was clearly a model for Dewing: Picturesque America,В edited by the eminent poet William Cullen Bryant. Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Virginia Library.ДЇrom 1872 to 1874, New YorkвЂ™s D. Moran had visited the West to sketch for major paintings as well as illustrations. Thomas MoranвЂ™s etching The Half-Dome-View from Moran Point is the first plate in the book and perhaps the most beautiful. Popular, inexpensive periodicals, such as HarperвЂ™s Weekly,В mainly based in New York, sent artists west to make sketches for wood-engraved illustrations, and Currier & Ives and other firms produced inexpensive lithographic views of western scenery and towns.ДЇig. Interest in the West burgeoned after the Civil War and especially after the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. Such reports were distributed primarily to government officials but sometimes reached a wider public. These expeditions yielded many volumes containing small lithographs and engravings of the landscape, the inhabitants, the geology, and the flora and fauna of these regions.

government sponsored expeditions to explore the newly annexed territories and identify the best railroad routes.

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Following the close of the Mexican War in 1848, when the United States acquired California and other western territory and the Gold Rush was in full swing, the U.S. They were designed for a wealthy European audience. Few Americans saw these expensive works and their magnificent large plates-either aquatints or lithographs with hand coloring. In the 1830s and 1840s several works published in Europe depicted the topography and indigenous peoples along the upper Missouri River. Sold by subscription, the work first appeared serially in thirty parts, with more than eight hundred images produced by an array of printing technologies.ДЄ brief overview of what came before will help us understand Picturesque CaliforniaвЂ™s contribution to the imagery of the West and its place in the history of graphics more generally. 1846-1902) launched a project to provide the most comprehensive visual coverage of the Far West yet available: Picturesque California and the Region West of the Rocky Mountains, from Alaska to Mexico.В Edited by John Muir, who wrote much of its text, it was the first major illustrated work on the West produced primarily by westerners. In 1888, the San Francisco-based publisher James Dewing (ca. Some would have seen oil paintings, stereographs, or photographs of these famous sites, and many more would have seen wood-engraved illustrations in inexpensive periodicals with national circulations. The great exceptions were the regionвЂ™s prime natural wonders, Yosemite Valley, the giant sequoias, Yellowstone National Park, and the Grand Canyon. Van Dyke wrote in Picturesque California,В came in вЂњPullman cars instead of вЂprairie schoonersвЂ™вЂќ and вЂњbuilt fine houses instead of log cabins.вЂќ Yet for most Americans, the Far West was still largely unknown. With several rail lines now completed, many immigrants, as T. This was especially true of the largest western state, California, which had joined the union in 1850: by 1880 its population surpassed 860,000 and would grow in the next decade to over 1.2 million-less than VirginiaвЂ™s but more than MarylandвЂ™s, two states that had been absorbing immigrants since the seventeenth century. In the late 1880s the far western states were attracting new residents from across the United States and around the world. How westerners portrayed the West in the age of John Muir

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