Western Americana

Washington, D.C.: Robert Armstrong, 1853. First Edition . Hardcover. Fair. Senate Ex. Doc. 59, 32d Congress, 2nd Session. First Edition with seventy-nine plates and usual first state numbering problems: 23 Landscape plates, numbered 1-13 and 15-21 with three unnumbered plates at end; 6 Mammal plates; 5 Bird plates, with no Plate II as usual, numbered 1 and then 3-6; 21 Reptile plates with two plates marked Plate 10, Plate 12 marked Plate 11, and Plate 14 marked either Plate 18 or 13; 3 Fish plates, and 21 Plant plates with the last being Aploppus Nuttalii. 8vo, three-quarter leather by unknown binder with name S.H. Walley (presume this is U.S. Representative Samuel H. Walley from Massachusetts) stamped at bottom of spine; fair (boards loose, almost detached, and only held in place with new cords by a binder; in other words, not completely restored; joints torn; marbled paper on boards heavily rubbed and worn; edges of boards heavily worn and scraped; spine creased, scraped, and scarred; leather on… Read More

New York: D. Appleton, 1854. 1st ed. . Hardcover. VG/No Jacket. 1130 pages. Travels and work connected with the United States and Mexican Boundary Commission during the years 1850, '51, '52, and '53. Gift inscription on half-title page of each book, dated July 4, 1854. Folding lithograph frontis in each volume. Folding map in volume 1. The map has a six inch diagonal tear. Map opens to about 20 inches wide by 16 tall. Dark green or black cloth-covered boards. Title and Saguaro cactus in gilt on spine of each book. Scattered illustrations through both books, including many tissue protected lithographs on Howes B201; Raines p.22; Graff 198; BTB-12. VG/No Jacket. Clean and solid. Item #: B9647.

Rochester, New York, nd. (ca.1900): Vredenburg & Co. Oblong Quarto. 100 leaves, all illustrations (138 images). This work which is the largest early photographic editon of Graham County and includes photographs of smelters, factories, copper mining, drug stores, railroad stations, landscapes, libraries, small businesses as well as school buildings. While more than half are devoted to mining, it has many pictures of locations in Graham County which have appeared nowhere else. Two smaller editions were done by newspaper publishes with 30 to 50 pages with mostly text. Here the printing was done by the Electric City Engraving Company of Buffalo which had pioneered Illustrated with half tones by Simon Werner. As is the case with the earliest Arizona Territorial Books, the printing processes for better illustrations were either done in San Francisco or in New York. Bound in brown cloth lettered and decorated in gilt. Inner hinges cracked but holding quite well, lacks rear free endpapers. Rare in… Read More

Shane - Jack Schaefer (Rare Western 1st Edition Early Printing 1949 Hardcover w/ DJ) Lone Gunfighter Film Adaptation
**This book has a printing/binding error between pages 152-169, where pages 89-104 were duplicated and inserted at that location. In addition, pages 153-168 were never included in this copy.**
Please note that this is an early printing given the price and lack of subsequent printings; however it is NOT a first printing given the color of the hardcover and the title page does not list a year.
Copyright 1949, published by Houghton Mifflin Company (Boston). Dust jacket in protective mylar is price clipped. Jacket shows wear along the edges and hinges, as well as a black mark/streak on the rear. Blue hardcover has a heavily bumped spine tail and nick along the rear bottom-edge. There are a handful of pages (such as pg. 1-4, 5-8, 209-212, 213-end) that have not been "cut" so it appears the book has gone unread; some of the page ends in these sections have small tears. Also, there is the… Read More

12 mo. (6 x 4 inches) San Francisco: Marvin & Hitchcock, 1852. First Edition. 2 [v]-viii, 258 pages, original quarter blind tooled red roan, good condition, cloth boards, with wear to lower spine (lower left hinge on front cover split, but holding), gilt title at head of spine, publishers name in gilt at foot of spine, original cloth boards showing evidence of old moisture splash or spill, minor foxing on preliminary and last leaves; contents clean, intact and unaffected. Old library label beneath old inked inscription "Placed in Library because of California history contained in the (the last word is un-readable)" on front pastedown.

A fine unsophisticated example. The Norris catalogue refers to it as "The first text-book published in San Francisco."

An observation attributed to Cowan refers to it as "... the first educational work published in California after American rule." The last 12 pages are titled "Geography, History, and Present Condition of California."

Marvin and Hitchcock were San… Read More

Philadelphia: Carey & Hart, 1846. First Edition. Hardcover. Very good. Title continues: "With a Description of the Countries Passed Through, Including their Geography, Geology, Resources, Present Condition, and the Different Nations Inhabiting Them." 7.5" x 4.5", 303 pp, bound in three-quarter leather and marbled boards; rebacked, with new endpapers, earlier spine laid down. The large folding map is supplied in facsimile. Light foxing to title page, stain affecting margin and a small amount of text on last ca. 20 leaves, otherwise quite clean. First edition, first issue (with page numbers 77-88, 270-271, and 302 placed in the inner margin) of one of the most important overland narratives, with considerable detail on the fur trade. Sage (1817-1893) was a self-taught newspaper printer and editor from Ohio with a strong impulse to travel and explore. Eager to learn more about the vast region beyond the Missouri frontier, in 1841 he organized a small party and headed west. His travels brought him into… Read More

[Texas] Eleazer Huntington. Map of the United States. Compiled from the latest authorities. Hartford: H.F. Sumner & Co. 1833. Hand colored engraved map. 35 x 52 cm. Very good.
OCLC shows two holdings (LOC & UT-Arlington). Rare Book Hub shows no auction or catalog listings. Map of the United States, showing the Missouri Territory with locations of Native American tribes. Also shows lands of Mexico stretching north to the 42d parallel and including present day Texas. Includes a table of distances at lower right. Relief shown by hachures. Prime meridians: Greenwich and Washington, D.C. Includes distance table. Fold-lined. Engraved by E. Huntington.

[Texas Revolution] Texas Veteran Association. Twenty-Fifth Annual Re-Union Texas Veterans. Dallas, April 20 and 21. 1898. [Dallas, Texas?]: Texas Veteran Association. 1898. Color silk ribbon in form of the Texas flag. 5.75 x 20 cm. Very good.
All of these veteran reunion ribbons are scarce. The ribbon is from the 1898 25th reunion in Dallas of Texas veterans who fought in the Texas Revolutionary war witj Mexico. The result of winning the war with Mexico Texas gained its Independence and became the Republic of Texas its own country in 1836. There were not that many veterans of the war and not that many were surviving into 1898 so that makes this a pretty rare ribbon. A great display piece.

[Portland, OR & Seattle, WA: Walter Angus MacKay, Julia Rose Eder MacKay, Cross & Dimmitt, ca. 1880-1958]. Two vols. 1st - Thick oblong 4to. 11.5 x 8.75 x 2.25 in. [128 pp (unpaginated).], on thick black paper. With 461 photographs sized 1.75 x 2.75 in. up to 4.5 x 5.5 in., including 2 CDV’s, 1 cyanotype, several albumen, and range of silver gelatin snapshots on matted and glossy paper stock, many w/ annotations either on verso, below images, or w/in the margins at lower fore-edge, or in pencil, some w/ white ink alongside the images. Contemporary flexible polished calf post-binder, punch-sewn at gutter margin in gold silk braid, RPPC of Tillamook Bay, OR by Gregg mounted on front cover (chipping & wear to front cover, wear to corners, wear & rubbing to some fore-edges, occasional chipping, minor closed tears), still VG exemplar; 2nd vol. -- Oblong 8vo. 8 x 5.75 in. [78 pp (unpaginated).], on thick tan paper stock. With 101 silver gelatin photographs mounted, sized from 1.75 x 2.75 in. up to 4 x 6… Read More

Denver, (1870): S.S. Wallihan & Company. Octavo. The first year of publication. 442 pages, plus 7 full page ads in the front and 59 full page ads at the rear with ads found throughout the text. Besides being an important and the earliest accurate directory of Denver and other Colorado counties, it has a detailed list of the mines in all the counties (p. 174-216) Howes C 611 who notes this was printed in Chicago prior to the fire, thus, a pre-Chicago fire imprint. It also has the bookseller label of Raymer's Old Bookstore. He later removed to Minneapolis where he advertised using the same ad format in 1885 and then in 1889 was convicted of violating the second-hand dealer's ordinance for buying valuable books for only $1. Bound in original green cloth centrally stamped in gilt, spine lettering gilt. Professional restoration to spine ends, light wear to corners, some soiling. A very good copy. [Howes-611, Streeter 4280].

San Francisco: Taber Photo, 1880. Ephemera. Near fine. An imperial plate (8-1/2 by 12-1/2 inches) portrait of Galen Clark holding a rifle and standing in front of one of the first famous trees from the Yosemite area. Watkins took this image in 1865 or 1866, during one of his extended trips to Yosemite. It was printed by Isaiah Taber from the original negative, after Taber took over Watkins's bankrupt photo studio. The Getty owns a copy of this image and it is very similar to one of Watkins's mammoth-plate images (Naef and Hult-Lewis, Carleton Watkins: The Complete Mammoth Photographs, no. 104). While it is generally known that Watkins regularly took his 18-by-22-inch mammoth glass-plate camera and a stereoview camera to Yosemite, the existence of imperial plate photographs suggests he took a third camera with him on his trips. Amy S. Doherty ("Carleton E. Watkins, Photographer: 1829-1916" in the Syracuse University Courier vol. 15, no. 4, 1978) proposed this idea based on an examination of a bound… Read More

The Rocky Mountains; Or, Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West, of the Army of the United States, and Illustrated from Various Other Sources.1837, 2 volumes, First American Edition. . With a fold out original map in front of each volume. Each volume 248 pages. Volume one has 10 pages of publisher's book ads. Philadelphia: Carey, Lea & Blanchard. 12mo.Unique early story of exploration and mapping of the West from Green River to the Great Salt Lake and on to Walla Walla. Bonneville and his party were among the earliest to do so. Also includes Joe Walker's fur trapping story over the Sierra Nevada to CaliforniaCondition: This two volume set has been restored to its original appearance as photographed. Woven cloth and aged printed paper labels convincingly mimic the originals, making this a two volume treasure ready for the future. Both fold out maps are original, as is the total text block. Maps are complete, with archival tissue reinforcement on some edges. One small corner of one of the… Read More

Quarto in oblong format (11 by 14 1/2 inches) Oakland, California: Thompson & West [Printed by Pacific Press Printing and Publishing House], 1880. First, Original Edition. [3] iv-vi [2], [1] 12-192 pages; eighty-seven full page lithographic views, including a double page bird's-eye-view of the Wolfskill Ranch; full page colored map showing the Western States of Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California dated 1878.

Good condition: stamped-embossed original cloth over boards, with title in gilt centered on the front cover; professionally re-backed, with new corners, new endpapers to match the period; title in gilt on spine. Loss to lower right margin of one view, not affecting that image, archival repair to tear in margin of another plate, not affecting that image; another view, and pages 19-22, 37-38, 129-130 provided in facsimile, and are compatible to the contents - the book is in otherwise original condition, with binding and contents intact.

The fine plates are of local businesses, residences, farms,… Read More

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Signed and Inscribed on the half-title page by the author: For Irving & Harriet / All the best / Your friend / Cormac. First trade edition / First printing. Black cloth spine, black paper-covered boards. Very fine in very fine dust jacket. Inscribed to Irving and Harriet Brown, former booksellers, owners of HI Books and members of McCarthy's inner circle in El Paso. Inscribed copies of McCarthy's work are rarely on the market.

New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968. First edition / First printing. Brown cloth. Fine in a fine dust jacket. A superb copy. Edward Abbey's masterpiece. A memoir, nature writing that set a new standard, it became a significant touchstone for the Environmentalist Movement.