MAPS, HISTORY of cartography, GEOGRAPHICAL research, WEST (U.S.), and WEST (U.S.) -- Description & travel

Charts made by great eighteenth century navigators, such as George Vancouver and James Cook, may seem flat and lifeless legacies, perpetuating the names of British nobility and Admiralty; but charts that reflect imperial aspirations can also reveal personal emotions. Behind the surveying, naming, and mapping of coastal features one can discern how the lives of these two men were geographically intertwined in a deeply personal way. Close reading of charts and journals reveals Vancouver's profound personal regard for Cook, and the permanent sense of loss that marked Vancouver's adult naval career. In the cartographic legacy, this obscure emotional bond still transcends time and space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COLORADO state history to 1876, WESTERN United States history, 1848-1860, SLAVERY -- United States -- History, HISTORY of United States territories & possessions, MINERAL industries, HISTORY of mineral industries, WEST (U.S.) -- Maps, GOLD mines & mining, and NINETEENTH century

We commonly acknowledge that the extension of slavery into the West was a primary cause of the sectional crisis. Yet we tend to treat these two mid-nineteenth- century narratives as geographically distinct: a battle over slavery engulfs the East while mineral rushes and migration transform the West. Here the creation of the Colorado Territory is framed within both these developments as well as in the shifting conception of American geography in the 1850s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]