"Approach to Cadotte's Pass"by John Mix Stanley

"Approach to Cadotte's Pass"by John Mix Stanley

C.1855

Hand-Painted Lithograph

A line of horseback riders snaking across a vast, arid valley floor serves as the central focal point of this 1860 tinted lithograph titled "Approach to Cadotte's Pass." Based on an original field drawing by the prominent Western artist John Mix Stanley, this print was meticulously produced by the famous New York lithography firm Sarony, Major & Knapp. The sweeping panoramic scene captures a federal exploration party navigating an expansive prairie landscape bounded by distinctive, flat-topped geological bluffs and conical rock mounds rising under a wide, softly clouded sky. Small desert shrubs anchor the immediate foreground, leading the viewer's eye along the expedition's path toward the rugged passage hidden within the distant Rocky Mountains. The delicate tonal stone work and subtle watercolor tinting beautifully preserve Stanley's sharp ethnographic eye and mastery of frontier scale, finalized with lower margin printing text reading "Approach to Cadotte's Pass". 

This composition belongs to a broader historical archive generated by the United States government during the mid-nineteenth century, where teams of scientists, engineers, and artists were commissioned to systematically map the uncharted territories of the American West. Published as Plate XXIX in the landmark multi-volume government document Reports of Explorations and Surveys, to Ascertain the Most Practicable and Economical Route for a Railroad from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, prints like this hold monumental historical importance because they document the foundational geological and cultural surveys of the expansionist era. By illustrating the treacherous pathways of the Northern Pacific Survey route managed under Governor Isaac Stevens, the print highlights the critical intersection of American infrastructure development, early frontier illustration, and the strategic cartography that reshaped the geography of North America

Dimensions: H 9”x 11 ½”W

Condition: Some tears from binding and a pin hole on the upper edge of the paper