Climatic Map of the Eastern Slope of the Rocky Moutains
- Title:
- Climatic Map of the Eastern Slope of the Rocky Moutains
- Alternate Title:
- Climatic Map of the Eastern Slope of the Rocky Moutains Compiled from U.S.A. Signal Service and Medical Reports Geological Surveys Individual Observations &c.
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Denison, Charles
- Date:
- 1880
- Posted Date:
- 2017-04-14
- ID Number:
- 1082.01
- File Name:
- PJM_1082_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1870 - 1899
- Subject:
- Disaster/Health/Environment
Not So Persuasive
Advertising & Promotion - Measurement:
- 54 x 25 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This attractive map has been called "Perhaps the most enthusiastic adoption of environmental mapping to advance the West." Schulten 2012, 115. It was drawn by Dr. Charles Denison, who emigrated to Denver after a pulmonary hemorrhage and thereafter "ardently promoted the region as a refuge for consumptives while simultaneously investing in health resorts along the Front Range." Ibid. 116. The map accompanies and is explained in chapter IV of Denison's 1880 book, "Rocky Mountain Health Resorts: An Analytical Study of High Altitudes in Relation to the Arrest of Chronic Pulmonary Disease," a didactic work promoting his views (and investments).
The map provides a staggering amount of data: temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, wind and vapor, each for every one of the four seasons and annually, and for various Signal Service reporting stations at five bands of elevation, as well as the days when if was fair, cloudy, rainy or snowy at other locations. In fact, the map attempts to communicate so much that it fails to communicate much of anything. Denison himself seems to have realized this, and warned that "The reader is advised, before attempting to understand the Climatic Map, to read this accompanying explanation carefully, without which it might be liable to the criticism of being too crowded and complex." P.26. At least for this reader of the accompanying explanation, the map is still too crowded and complex. Denison apparently "helped to lure an estimated thirty thousand invalids to Denver by 1890, nearly a third of its population" (Schulten 2012, 116), but this map seems unlikely to have played a significant role in that success.
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Source:
- Denison, Charles. 1880. Rocky Mountain Health Resorts: An Analytical Study of High Altitudes in Relation to the Arrest of Chronic Pulmonary Disease. Boston: Houghton Osgood & Co.
- Repository:
- Private Collection of PJ Mode
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.