Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1882. First edition. 2 volumes, comprising: text, 4to; atlas, large folio. Text: 42 plates, many in color, several double-page by Thomas Moran, William H. Holmes and others; atlas: lithograph title-page and 22 folding plates, almost all in color. Atlas disbound with sheets folded into a slipcase, several marginal repairs. Later cloth. Farquhar, Colorado River 73; Reese, Best of the West 197.

First edition of "one of the greatest if not the greatest of all Grand Canyon books" (Farquhar). The atlas was published as a result of the great scientific expeditions to the American West after the Civil War with several picturesque views illustrating the Grand Canyon, including those by W.H. Holmes, whom William Goetzmann called "the greatest artist-topographer and man of many talents that the West ever produced. He could sketch panoramas of twisted mountain ranges, sloping mountains, escarpments, plateaus, canyons, fault blocks, and grassy meadows, accurately depicting hundreds of miles of terrain. They were better than maps and better than photographs because he gets details of stratigraphy that light and shadow obscured from the camera... his illustrations for [this work] are masterpieces of realism and draftsmanship as well as feats of imaginative observation" (Goetzmann, pp.512-513).