Getting Around America: Maps and Views

Maps can seem primitive, unimaginative and schematic, like this one:

which records the plat or lot-map for Salt Lake City, Utah in the 19th century. But beware! The most seemingly uninflected of maps may be instead a work of fictional fabulism, a tool of deceit and fraud, a declaration of hope, or a sober description of fact-- present fact, or future. The view here, for example, tells us what the Mormons planned for their city. It doesn't tell us what in fact their citizens might have seen when they arrived after an arduous journey by pushcart, ox-train, mule-train or railroad.