Original Printing of Jo Mora's Classic Pictorial Map of the Grand Canyon

"Grand Canyon", Mora, Joseph Jacinto

This is the first printed edition of Jo Mora's splashy map of the Grand Canyon, printed in black & white and in a larger format than the later color editions. It is one of three maps he created showcasing American national parks. Mora's dedication on this map is indicative of his blend of irreverence and serious passion for the particulars of the land: "Dedicated to those unfortunate souls who through ignorance, apathy, or misfortune, have never seen the abysmal silent climax this carte humorously depicts." The "abysmal silent climax" is shown in bird's-eye view with numerous landmarks noted, among them several formations or "temples" illustrated with various religious and mythological figures (such as Vishnu, Buddha, Thor, and Solomon). Across the top of the sheet are the title and several panels depicting the Union Pacific Grand Canyon Lodge, an elderly couple unimpressed with the "teeney weeney" Colorado River they spot from the rim of the canyon, members of the Hopi and Navajo tribes (Mora lived with these tribes for a couple of years), and more. The hustle and bustle of the southern rim of the canyon is rendered in an inset at bottom left, with special attention paid to tourist attractions. Additional panels appear in the bottom right corner, including one that connects Hopi myth to the Phantom Ranch. An endlessly fun and fascinating map. Imprint at bottom left reads "The Jo Mora Maps, Carmel, California."

Joseph ("Jo") Jacinto Mora was born in Uruguay in 1876 and moved the following year with his family to the eastern United States. He showed an early aptitude for the arts and began illustrating for newspapers and children's books in his twenties. Mora was fascinated with the American West, and after working on cattle ranches in Texas and Mexico as a young adult, he moved permanently out west in 1903. He spent his time learning about old Spanish vaqueros, American cowboys, and the Hopi and Navajo tribes, subjects which became lifelong passions and the focus of much of his work. His paintings and photographs of the Hopi were memorialized into a traveling exhibit for the Smithsonian Institution in 1979.

Mora was an artist with many talents, including drawing, painting, illustration, sculpture, photography, writing, and mapmaking. His artistic skills were perhaps unsurprising, as his father was a noted sculptor, and Jo Mora on occasion helped his father on sculpting commissions, including the facade of the Native Sons of the Golden West Building in San Francisco. His foray into mapmaking began later in his career while he was residing in Pebble Beach, California, where he would spend the last 27 years of his life. Mora's first map was of the Monterey Peninsula, entitled California's Playground, and was commissioned by the Del Monte Hotel to commemorate the hotel's grand reopening in 1926. The map combined historical facts with whimsical illustrations, cartographic points of interest, cartoonish figures, and witty notations. And thus was born Mora's unique style that is common on all of his "cartes," a term that he used for his cartographic works. Although Mora only created about a dozen maps in his career, Stephen J. Hornsby contends that "His maps formed the most important collection of pictorial cartography done by any artist of one particular region of the United States" (Hornsby, p. 29).

Provenance: collection of Peter Hiller. The map is accompanied by a letter of provenance signed by Hiller, Jo Mora Consultant and author of The Life and Times of Jo Mora: Iconic Artist of the American West.

References: Hornsby (Picturing America) pp. 28-31; Rumsey #8077.

Condition: A

A crisp example on a faintly and pleasantly toned sheet with tiny edge tears confined to the blank margins.