Augustus Koch was a 19th century cartographer who traveled the country for decades creating bird’s-eye views of towns and cities. He traveled to over twenty-three states producing fantastic aerial views of cities from Jacksonville, Florida, to Los Angeles, California. Koch was born in Berlin in 1834; after the 1848 Democratic Revolution and blacklisting by the German secret police, he fled to England. Eventually making his way to America, he served in the Civil War for the Union Army drawing maps of the army’s advance. He was discharged in 1865, perhaps because of a case of malaria, and embarked on what was to prove a successful career in cartography in 1868. He meticulously created around 112 bird’s-eye views.

One newspaper reporter gushed that Koch’s maps depicted “every street, block, railroad track, switch and turn-table, every bridge, tree, and barn, in fact every object that would strike the eye of a man up a little ways in a balloon.”

Some researchers have compared Koch’s bird’s eye view maps with photographs and have found him to be remarkably accurate. Often times though his maps included buildings that were expected to be built in an effort to keep them “up-to-date;” many times the buildings were never built.

Of the bird’s-eye view map of Seattle it was said “Koch’s map combines an engineer’s quest for details and an artist’s imagination to make those details come to life.”

Koch’s original lithograph bird’s eye view of the city of Bozeman, Gallatin County, Mont. in 1898 measured 51 x 61 cm and was published by Haynes Studios. An original is held at MSU; the Contributing Institution is Montana Historical Society Research Center and the version displayed on our cover was obtained by the Gallatin History Museum.

 Koch’s vision of Bozeman shows its pioneer roots.