Carl Irving Wheat

Carl Irving Wheat (December 5, 1892 – June 23, 1966) was a California lawyer and historian and a historical cartographer of the American West.

He returned to private practice in San Francisco in 1929, then served on the legal staff of the Federal Communications Commission between 1936 and 1938.

Wheat continued to contribute to the California Historical Society Quarterly with such articles as Pioneer Visitors to Death Valley After the Forty-Niners (September, 1939).

While in Los Angeles, Wheat served on the publication committee of the Historical Society of Southern California where he published The Forty-Niners in Death Valley: A Tentative Census (1939).

In 1953 he rediscovered a copy of the 1847 Frémont map in the collection of the American Geographical Society that bore manuscript emendations by George Gibbs.

Written with the research and editorial cooperation of Dale Morgan, the volumes describe unfolding geographic knowledge and important maps of the West's exploration and migration, from the Spanish discovery to the opening of the Civil War.

His papers are archived in the Bancroft Library Wheat served as a Trustee of Pomona College and was awarded an honorary degree from that institution in 1959.