Loading map...

1885 Map of La Sal

Name: 1885 Topographic Map of La Sal
Creator: U.S. Geological Survey
Published: 1885
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

USGS Topo · Published 1885

About this map

The Green River carves its way through the southwestern portion of this 1885 survey, winding through the depths of Stillwater Canyon and Cataract Canyon beneath the towering Orange Cliffs. This era of exploration, documented by the work of J.W. Powell and Hayden, captures a fledgling Moab and the nearby settlement of Plainfield within the fertile Spanish Valley. To the east, the massive peaks of the La Sal Mountains, including Mt Peale and Mt Waas, dominate the horizon above the La Sal settlement.

Industrial expansion is visible in the north where the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad skirts the edge of the Dome Plateau. The map illustrates a landscape defined by dramatic elevation changes, from the deep river corridors to the high mesas and the isolated Sinbad Valley, recording the early territorial layout of Emery and San Juan counties during the late nineteenth-century Western expansion.