Antique Map of Central America, with Proposed Nicaragua Canal, 1899

Name: Antique Map of Central America, with Proposed Nicaragua Canal, 1899
Brand: Rand McNally
SKU: BG-12793-2-90
Price: 385 USD
Availability: InStock

$385

€345 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

Buy now Ask a question

Shipping to the United States: $51 standard, $73 express, insured and tracked.

Date: 1899
Maker: Rand McNally
Kind: Maps
Technique: Lithograph
Color: Printed color
Size: 52 × 69 cm (20.5 × 27.2 in)
Condition: Good. Good condition for its age. Light age toning, deeper toward the edges, a few small spots and the original central fold as issued. Please review the images for further condition details.
Period: The Gilded Age
Places: Central America
Reference: BG-12793-2-90

What the condition grades mean

Excellent: Bright and clean, with no faults worth mentioning.
Very good: Only light signs of age, such as faint toning.
Good: Normal signs of age for a sheet of this period: toning, some foxing, small marks or neat old repairs.
Fair: Clear faults such as staining, tears or repairs, priced to match.

Every fault we see is written in the condition note, and the whole sheet is shown uncropped in the photos.

Guaranteed original. This is an original of the period stated, not a later reproduction or print-on-demand copy. If it is ever shown to be otherwise, we refund you in full.

Shipping to the United States. Sent from our gallery in Langweer, the Netherlands, flat between boards or rolled in a tube, and fully insured. Delivery and import charges.

About this piece

An antique map of Central America printed by Rand McNally in 1899 across pages 404 and 405 of its indexed atlas, this sheet covers the isthmus from the Mexican state of Chiapas and the Yucatan Peninsula in the northwest down through Guatemala, British Honduras, Honduras, Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to the Panama border in the southeast. Each republic and colony is washed in a distinct pastel tint, yellow for Guatemala and Honduras, orange-pink for British Honduras and Salvador, and pink again for Costa Rica, with population tables for the chief cities of each country down the left margin.

The most historically pointed feature is the inset at lower left, "Map Showing Proposed Line of Nicaragua Canal," which traces a canal route from Greytown on the Caribbean, across Lake Nicaragua, to the Pacific coast. In 1899 this route, not the one eventually built across Panama, was the leading American proposal for an interoceanic canal, and its appearance here as a serious cartographic feature rather than a footnote shows how live the question still was when this sheet was printed; the Panama route would not be selected until 1902, and the canal itself was not completed until 1914.

Lake Nicaragua and Lake Managua dominate the center of the main map, and the volcanic cordillera running the length of the isthmus is rendered in continuous hachured relief. Scale is given as 69.16 statute miles to a degree, and a note at lower left directs the reader to the adjoining Mexico sheet.

Rand McNally, which grew from William Rand's Chicago printing business of the 1850s after Andrew McNally joined it, was by the 1890s one of the leading map publishers in the United States. This antique map of Central America is a color lithograph, the outline printed in black with the original political colors printed over it, and an original 1899 atlas sheet, issued folded through the center. It is suitable for framing. The color is printed rather than applied by hand.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light age toning, deeper toward the edges, a few small spots and the original central fold as issued. Please review the images for further condition details.

This is an original antique map, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.

★