Washington: Government Printing Office, 1882. In two volumes, comprising: quarto text volume and large folio atlas. Text volume illustrated with 42 plates (many in color, and several double-page) by Thomas Moran, William H. Holmes and others; atlas volume illustrated with lithograph title-page and 22 folding plates (almost all in color). Original brown cloth-covered boards, stamped in gilt, text volume rebacked with partial original spine laid down, tip and fore-edge of atlas volume repaired; text volume with dampstaining to gutter near foot; atlas volume with small spot of dampstaining to upper edge, and small scattered stains to title-page; a few plates with tiny spots of wear to image area; abrasion on front paste-down of atlas volume from sometime removed label. Provenance: Herbert Hoover Jr. (1903-1969), son of U.S. President Herbert Hoover (book-plate on front paste-down of text volume). 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).