Mounted sketches of terrain covered by three expeditions in 1853 and 1854 which were assembled to explore and survey for a possible route for a railroad through the Rocky Mountains.

The contents are described in hand-written ink on the title page - The Far West. Explorations of the country from the Missisippi [sic] river to the Pacific Ocean by Gunnison, Frimont [sic], Beckuith [sic] in 1853-1854. Executed for the Congress in 1854-1855 by Schumann. An insertion in the same hand reads “in water-colors and indian-ink”, though the sketches are all done in pencil. The drawings are unsigned and some untitled. Most dates and locations on them apparently were added in pencil either by the artist or by the unknown person who assembled the album.

The three artists who accompanied Gunnison, Fremont and Beckwith were Richard H. Kern, Solomon N. Carvalho (primarily a daguerreotypist) and F. W. Egloffstein. Many of the views are identifiable as locales traversed by both parties (Gunnison and Kern and then Fremont, Egloffstein and Carvalho, following Gunnison’s trail three months later). However, the bulk of these drawings appear to be the field sketches of Richard H. Kern. Some of these are attributed to Kern in volume 2 of the government publication done under the direction of the Secretary of War, 1855-1861 - Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi to the Atlantic Ocean, which included lithographs by John Mix Stanley done from sketches by Richard H. Kern.

The album contains one letter, dated January 18, 1856, from E.G. Beckwith to C. Schumann, complementing the engraver for his work “…from the sketches of F.W. Egloffstein taken in the field, for the illustration of the report of the country explored by me in 1854”. Egloffstein had joined Beckwith to continue the expedition after Gunnison and Kern were killed in Utah by Ute Indians on Oct. 26, 1853, and Beckwith’s official report contains praise of his map-maker as a very able assistant in during the year 1854.

With a few exceptions, sketches are on tissue paper, glued onto album pages, with no attempt at chronological or alphabetical order. Almost all the drawings appear to have been done in 1853, although because Beckwith’s party completed the survey in northern California in 1854, it is probable that the sketches of Mt. Shasta are the work of Egloffstein.

The album has been disbound and the pages placed in folders. The sketches, on both front and back of the pages, were apparently numbered by the album creator (several are missing). Page numbers on the top right-hand corner probably were added much later.