• Title : US Coast Survey A D Buache Superintendant Reconnaissance of Smiths or Blunts Island Washington 1854....By James Alden 1854......US Coast Survey A D Bache Superintendant Sketch of Anacapa Island in Santa Barbara Channel Washington 1854....By James Alden 1854
• Size: 14in x 11n (355mm x 280mm)
• Condition: (A+) Fine Condition
• Date : 1854
• Ref #:  93014

Description:
These original antique lithograph maps the first of Smiths Island off Washington State and the other of Anacapa Island of Port Hueneme, California, in Ventura County by Alexander Dallas Bache (great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin) in 1854 - dated - was published by the official chart-maker of the United States, the office of The US Coast Survey.

General Definitions:
Paper thickness and quality: - Heavy and stable
Paper color : - off white
Age of map color: -
Colors used: -
General color appearance: -
Paper size: - 14in x 11n (355mm x 280mm)
Plate size: - 14in x 11n (355mm x 280mm)
Margins: - Min 1/2in (12mm)

Imperfections:
Margins: - None
Plate area: - None
Verso: - None

Background: 
Smith Island is an island located in the eastern Strait of Juan de Fuca, Washington, about midway between Admiralty Inlet and Lopez Island. It is connected to the smaller Minor Island, to its east, by a low spit that is covered at high tide. The low, grassy islands have a few trees and are an important habitat for seabirds, and the beaches are a resting site for sea lions. The islands are part of the San Juan Islands National Wildlife Refuge, and are usually closed to the public.
The Smith Island Light was constructed on the island in 1858. Originally, this stood about 200 feet away from the islands western edge. The bluff began to erode, and when the bluff reached the front door in the 1950s, the lighthouse was abandoned. During the 1980s until the spring of 1998, the last part of the broken lighthouse clung precariously to the bluff.
The lighthouse was replaced with an automated navigational light 97 feet (30 meters) high. Minor Island also has a light. The island is also the site of a weather station operated by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Smith Island was discovered by José María Narváez in 1791, which he called Isla de Bonilla. It received its present name from Hudsons Bay Company traders in the first half of the 19th century.
Travel to these islands requires the largest open-water transit in Washington State. Their nearest neighbor is Whidbey Island, approximately 5.5 miles (8.8 km) distant.
Anacapa Island is a small volcanic island located about 11 miles (18 km) off the coast of Port Hueneme, California, in Ventura County. The island is composed of a series of narrow islets 6 mi (10 km) long, oriented generally east-west and 5 mi (8 km) east of Santa Cruz Island. The three main islets, East, Middle and West Anacapa, are collectively known as The Anacapas by some authors. All three islets have precipitous cliffs, dropping off steeply into the sea.
Anacapa is the only one of the Channel Islands to have a non-Spanish-derived name. Anacapa comes from the Chumash word Ennepah or Anyapakh, meaning mirage island. Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo passed by the island in 1542, but it was George Vancouver who labeled it Enecapa on his 1790 chart, while the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey labeled it Anacapa in 1854.
On the night of December 2, 1853, the sidewheel steamer Winfield Scott running at full speed crashed into the rocks off Middle Anacapa and sank. All of the passengers survived and were rescued after a week.
George Nidever was the first person to raise sheep on the island, starting in the 1850s or 1860s. Louis le Mesnager then signed a 5-year lease with the federal government around 1897, but his lease and sheep were taken over by Herman Bayfield Webster in 1907. His Sheep Camp operation was located on Middle Anacapa, which included 5 shacks and about 500 sheep. Ira Eaton acquired the lease in 1917 and held it until 1927, and used the island for his bootleg alcohol operation during Prohibition in the United States. The next resident of the island was Raymond (Frenchy) LeDreau who occupied 4 shacks on West Anacapa at Frenchys Cove, living as a recluse for the next 30 years, departing the island in his eighties after the island had become a National Monument.

U.S. Coast Survey (Office of Coast Survey)
The Office of Coast Survey is the official chart-maker of the United States. Set up in 1807, it is one of the U.S. governments oldest scientific organizations. In 1878 it was given the name of Coast and Geodetic Survey (C&GS). In 1970 it became part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The agency was established in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson signed the document entitled An act to provide for surveying the coasts of the United States. While the bills objective was specific—to produce nautical charts—it reflected larger issues of concern to the new nation: national boundaries, commerce, and defence.
The early years were difficult. Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, who was eventually to become the agencys first superintendent, went to England to collect scientific instruments but was unable to return through the duration of the War of 1812. After his return, he worked on a survey of the New York Harbor in 1817, but Congress stepped in to suspend the work because of tensions between civilian and military control of the agency. After several years under the control of the U.S. Army, the Survey of the Coast was reestablished in 1832, and President Andrew Jackson appointed Hassler as superintendent.
The U.S. Coast Survey was a civilian agency but, from the beginning, members of the Navy and Army were detailed to service with the Survey, and Navy ships were also detailed to its use. In general, army officers worked on topographic surveys on the land and maps based on the surveys, while navy officers worked on hydrographic surveys in coastal waters.
Alexander Dallas Bache, great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was the second Coast Survey superintendent. Bache was a physicist, scientist, and surveyor who established the first magnetic observatory and served as the first president of the National Academy of Sciences. Under Bache, Coast Survey quickly applied its resources to the Union cause during the Civil War. In addition to setting up additional lithographic presses to produce the thousands of charts required by the Navy and other vessels, Bache made a critical decision to send Coast Survey parties to work with blockading squadrons and armies in the field, producing hundreds of maps and charts. Bache detailed these activities in his annual reports to Congress.
Coast Survey cartographer Edwin Hergesheimer created the map showing the density of the slave population in the Southern states.
Bache was also one of four members of the governments Blockade Strategy Board, planning strategy to essentially strangle the South, economically and militarily. On April 16, 1861, President Lincoln issued a proclamation declaring the blockade of ports from South Carolina to Texas. Baches Notes on the Coast provided valuable information for Union naval forces.
Maps were of paramount importance in wartime:
It is certain that accurate maps must form the basis of well-conducted military operations, and that the best time to procure them is not when an attack is impending, or when the army waits, but when there is no hindrance to, or pressure upon, the surveyors. That no coast can be effectively attacked, defended, or blockaded without accurate maps and charts, has been fully proved by the events of the last two years, if, indeed, such a proposition required practical proof.
— Alexander Dallas Bache, 1862 report.
Coast Survey attracted some of the best and brightest scientists and naturalists. It commissioned the naturalist Louis Agassiz to conduct the first scientific study of the Florida reef system. James McNeill Whistler, who went on to paint the iconic Whistlers Mother, was a Coast Survey engraver. The naturalist John Muir was a guide and artist on Survey of the 39th Parallel across the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah.
The agencys men and women (women professionals were hired as early as 1845) led scientific and engineering activities through the decades. In 1926, they started production of aeronautical charts. During the height of the Great Depression, Coast and Geodetic Survey organized surveying parties and field offices that employed over 10,000 people, including many out-of-work engineers.
In World War II, C&GS sent over 1,000 civilian members and more than half of its commissioned officers to serve as hydrographers, artillery surveyors, cartographers, army engineers, intelligence officers, and geophysicists in all theaters of the war. Civilians on the home front produced over 100 million maps and charts for the Allied Forces. Eleven members of the C&GS gave their lives during the war.

Alexander Dallas Bache 1806 – 1867 was an American physicist, scientist, and surveyor who erected coastal fortifications and conducted a detailed survey to map the mid-eastern United States coastline. Originally an army engineer, he later became Superintendent of the U.S. Coast Survey, and built it into the foremost scientific institution in the country before the Civil War.
Alexander Bache was born in Philadelphia, the son of Richard Bache, Jr., and Sophia Burrell Dallas Bache. He came from a prominent family as he was the nephew of Vice-President George M. Dallas and naval hero Alexander J. Dallas. He was the grandson of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Dallas and was the great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin.
Bache was a professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania from 1828 to 1841 and again from 1842 to 1843. He spent 1836–1838 in Europe on behalf of the trustees of what became Girard College; he was named president of the college after his return. Abroad, he examined European education systems, and on his return he published a valuable report. From 1839 to 1842, he served as the first president of Central High School of Philadelphia, one of the oldest public high schools in the United States.
In 1843, on the death of Professor Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler, Bache was appointed superintendent of the United States Coast Survey. He convinced the United States Congress of the value of this work and, by means of the liberal aid it granted, he completed the mapping of the whole coast by a skillful division of labor and the erection of numerous observing stations. In addition, magnetic and meteorological data were collected. Bache served as head of the Coast Survey for 24 years (until his death).