Map of Alaska: showing known gold-bearing rocks with descriptive text contaiing sketches of the geography, geology, and gold deposits and routes to the gold fields. . . .

Washington, D.C.: Engraving and Printing Division of the United States Geological Survey, 1898. 8vo. [2], 44, [2] pp., including blanks. With 1 large folding map tipped-in to rear blank, sized 23.75 x 28.25 in., w/ gold-bearing districts printed in gold, water in green, routes in red, inset maps for Trails from Tide Water to the headwaters of the Yukon River, The Klondike Gold Region. Original printed gray-green softcovers (spine expertly silked, offsetting from old scotch tape repairs, removed from textblock which is still securely stapled), still VG copy, w/ map in exceptional fresh and bright condition. First edition of this map issued at the height of the Klondike gold rush, with Emmons noting in the preface that “within a single year the yield from the” Klondike region has exceeded the gold extracted from the entire Territory of Alaska, much of it mined in the Canadian regions and by American miners. The map details the Old Telegraph Trail and the Dalton Trail through British Columbia, as well as the all-water route via St. Michael and Chilkoot Pass. Birch Creek and Forty Miles mining districts are both carefully detailed. Emmons (1841-1911) served as assistant geologist under Clareknce King for the famed Transcontinental Survey Route, surveyed with Wilson Mount Rainier in 1870, and later was director of the Rocky Mountain Division of the USGS. See: Wickersham, 8223; Kurutz, Klondike & Alaska Gold Rushes, 585.