Howes called it the best handbook of the times
Horn's Overland Guide, from U.S. Indian Sub-Agency, Council Bluffs, on the Missouri River, to the City of Sacramento, in California.
New York: Published by J.H. Colton, 1852.
Price: $8,500.00
About the item
First edition, second issue, with the "opinions of the press" on page five, and the longer pagination of the main text. Large folding map, with route marked by hand in red. 83, [1], 18ads pp. 1 vols. 16mo. Howes called it the best handbook of the times. Original salmon cloth, stamped in blind and gilt. Spine torn and chipped. Cloth lightly soiled. Bookplates on front pastedown; contemporary inscription on front flyleaf. Blind embossed stamp on title page and a few internal leaves, else quite clean. Very good. In an octavo-sized blue half morocco and cloth clamshell case. Graff 1954; Howes H641 "b"; Sabin 33021; Streeter 5:3170; Wagner-Camp 214; Wheat, Gold Regions 221; Kurutz 343b; Wheat Gold Rush 105; Wheat Transmississippi 751; Streeter Sale 3170; Howell 50:529; Eberstadt 115:1050; Mintz 238.
Item #247609
"Best handbook for the central route available at the time" (Howes)
Hosea B. Horn was an Iowa lawyer, author, printer and newspaperman who made the overland trip to California in 1850 and used his experience to produce this detailed guide - the most popular and best known of its day. The text consists of a lengthy list of 'Notable Places, Objects and Remarks,' and describes the trail in a detailed, step-by-step fashion, with the distance between places, and cumulative tally of the total distance covered from Council Bluffs to Sacramento (2011 miles in total). The 5-page "appendix" includes other mileage charts, followed by 15 pages of "Business Advertisements." The map was executed by Colton and shows the entire central route, with all the cut-offs, marked in red. "Especial importance attaches to this work from the fact that it was one of the few guides which actually measured and described much of the route traversed. Horn had personally been over all the 'cut-offs' and he prepared what is possibly the most exact account of the 'Overland Trail' which has come down to us" - Eberstadt. The notes in the Streeter sale catalogue agreed with this assessment calling this work: "One of the best of the guides, as it is one of the few where the distances were closely measured."
