Rollandet Edward Compiler (1 results)

Hand-colored lithograph, 26.5" x 37.125" plus margins. CONDITION: Very good, light edge wear, one crease in upper-left corner. An appealing map of Colfax and Mora Counties in northeastern New Mexico and part of southern Colorado, highlighting the famous and controversial Maxwell Land Grant. This map was produced by the Maxwell Land Grant Co. amid its legal battle to have the validity of its grant recognized. The Maxwell Land Grant at upper-left is tinted pink, counties are outlined in color, and the map includes a small section of southern Colorado at the topas far as the Maxwell Grant extends. The map is bounded by Taos County in the west, San Miguel County in the south, and Texas and a "neutral strip" in the east. Details include railroads (built and proposed), wagon roads and trails (including the Old Santa Fe Trail), coal veins, the Maxwell beef pasture, telephone lines, ranches and companies, the U.S. Land Office at Folsom, Fort Union, mountains, mines, monuments, towns and cities, and bodies of water. Some of the railroads include the Denver, Texas & Fort Worth R.R. and the Denver and the Rio Grande R.R. Relief is shown by hachure and a scale indicating four miles to the inch appears below the title. The Maxwell Land Grant was the largest privately-owned contiguous tract of land in the U.S., comprising 1.7 million acres in New Mexico and Colorado, land originally occupied by the Jicarilla Apache Indians. The Grant's origins lie in the 1841 Beaubien-Miranda Land Grant that Governor Manuel Armijo made to Charles Beaubien and Guadalupe Miranda. After Beaubien's death in 1864, his son-in-law Lucien Maxwell and daughter María de la Luz gained control of the grant, the former becoming one of the richest, most powerful men in New Mexico. In 1870 the Maxwells sold the land to an English company. Disputes between settlers and the grant owners dominated northeastern New Mexico in the late-19th century and led to the Colfax County War (187388). After the English company bankrupted in 1874, a new group of Dutch owners formed the Maxwell Land Grant Co. In 1885, the new owners convinced the Territorial Governor Lionel Allen Sheldon to use the National Guard to suppress the squatters. In the early 1880s, the U.S. had sued the company for making claims to lands in the Public Domain in Colorado and in 1887 the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The court decision upheld the company's ownership of the land, prompting many settlers and squatters to vacate. By 1899, the Maxwell Co. had secured uncontested ownership of almost all the land in the Grant. Born in Holland, Edward Rollandet (18521914) served for four years in the Dutch army before emigrating to America in 1873. He eventually ventured out west and worked for the Maxwell Land Co. for two years. The present map was compiled from the original plats in the Surveyor General's Office at Santa Fe, New Mexico and also from private surveys by the Maxwell Land Grant Co. Rollandet later moved to Colorado and went into business and eventually became chief draughtsman in the Surveyor General's office. Rollandet helped draw maps of Colorado for H. L. Thayer during the silver mining boom including Thayer's New Map Of The State of Colorado (1878). He also published Rollandet's map of the city of Denver, Colorado (ca. 1889). REFERENCES: Rumsey 3526; "Marking NM's Historic Women: María de la Luz Beaubien Maxwellat" at New Mexico History Museum Blog.