Napa County California. 1914

Map Details and Condition:

color lithograph

dimensions: 26 3/4" x 19"

Brown Paper pocket covers with red bookstore label of Neal Stratford & Kerr, San Francisco

condition: professionally flattened and otherwise in as found, very good condition

Description:

This 1914 map of now popular wine country Napa County, California shows the county in 1914, with early roads, largely undeveloped, vast open land areas, and natural features. The numbered grid system on this map reflects the Public Land Survey System. Large open tracts of land are identified as ranches, such as Rancho Catacoula, or Rancho Las Putas, Rancho LaJota all of which are large swaths of undivided land. Urban grids are shown in the southernmost part of Napa County, and sections of the southernmost sections of Sonoma County and Solano County. The cities of Petaluma, Sonoma, Vallejo and Napa and Benicia show populated urban areas. A corner of Marin County is shown.

C.F. Weber & Co. and the Punnett Brothers published several series of California county maps, of which this Nap California 1914 map is one. The map's key, or Explanation shows utilities, steam and electric trains, roads, wagon roads, trails, reclamation districts and irrigation projects. The map key in its way is also a history of land use in 19th and early 20th c. California with a range of transit from wagon to electric and steam train. By comparison, the Map of Tulare County California 1907 more resembles the 19th c., with long haul train routes and little other transportation, and few roads.

The 1914 map of Napa California captures the county in transition from undeveloped to rural and surrounded by rapidly urbanizing neighboring counties in the proximity of San Francisco. The map is accompanied by its original pocket covers. The pocket cover bears a little red label of the San Francisco bookstore run by Neal, Stratford & Kerr, a highly regarded letterpress printer in San Francisco. The Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco credits the firm with organizing in 1919. That would mean the label on this pocket cover was at the earliest placed on the map five years after the map was first published. This suggest that the 1914 edition of the map of Napa California was still relied upon in 1919. The firm Neal Stratford & Kerr made a radical change from full service printer to poster art printer in the 1960's for dance concerts. Please see the collections of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.