Antique Map of Michigan, The Great Lakes State, Rand McNally, 1899

Name: Antique Map of Michigan, The Great Lakes State, Rand McNally, 1899
Brand: Rand McNally
SKU: BG-12793-2-42
Price: 440 USD
Availability: InStock

$440

€395 · dollar price at today's exchange rate

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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: 69 × 52 cm (27.2 × 20.5 in)
Condition: Good. Good condition for its age. Light, even age toning, minor handling wear to the sheet edges and the original central fold as issued. Please review the images for further condition details.
Period: The Gilded Age
Places: Michigan
Reference: BG-12793-2-42

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

Published by Rand McNally in 1899, this antique map of Michigan covers the Lower Peninsula on a double-page sheet, pages 218 and 219 of the indexed atlas, from the Straits of Mackinac to the Ohio and Indiana borders.

Lake Michigan, Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay are mapped along the state's long shorelines, and the county grid runs the full length of the peninsula. The farming counties of the south, Kalamazoo, Calhoun, Washtenaw and Oakland, are shown far more thickly settled than the still heavily timbered north around Grand Traverse Bay and the Au Sable and Manistee river country, where logging rather than farming remained the dominant land use. The fruit belt along the Lake Michigan shore, the lumber counties of the north-center and the Detroit corridor in the southeast can all be read in the pattern of settlement.

A dense railroad legend numbered in red at upper right lists over forty companies, the Ann Arbor, the Chicago and Grand Trunk, the Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee, the Flint and Pere Marquette, and the Michigan Central among them, with Detroit, in the southeast corner, at the greatest concentration of lines. Lansing, the capital, and Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo and Jackson are named among the busier junctions of the south. Scale is given as 12 statute miles to the inch, and a note at upper left directs the reader to the adjoining Ontario, Indiana, Ohio and Wisconsin maps and the atlas's separate Northern Michigan sheet.

Behind the sheet stands one of the great names of American map publishing. William Rand opened a printing business in Chicago in the 1850s, Andrew McNally joined him, and by the 1890s Rand McNally was one of the leading map publishers in the United States, with a reputation built on railroad and commercial maps kept current from issue to issue.

In technique it is a lithograph printed in color, with the black outline printed first and the pastel colors printed over it. Once framed, this antique map of Michigan would suit a home or office in the state today, and it will appeal to collectors of American state maps and railroad history.

The sheet is in good condition for its age, with light, even age toning, minor handling wear to the sheet edges 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.

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