Antique Map of Ontario, with Toronto and Ottawa Insets, Rand McNally, 1899

About this piece

This antique map of Ontario is Rand McNally's principal map of the province in its 1899 indexed atlas, a double-page spread on pages 378 and 379 running from Georgian Bay and Lake Huron in the northwest to the Saint Lawrence and the Ottawa Valley in the east, and south along the whole shoreline of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie. A dense red railroad network, keyed by number to a legend of over twenty companies at upper left, among them the Grand Trunk, the Canadian Pacific, the Michigan Central, the Wabash and the Toronto, Hamilton and Buffalo, covers the settled peninsula between Toronto and Windsor, thinning noticeably north of the Muskoka and Parry Sound districts.

Three insets add detail. At right, stacked one above another, small-scale plans of Ottawa and environs, a second urban inset, and Toronto and environs give street-level context to the principal cities. At lower center, "Western Portion of Ontario" extends the map west past Sault Sainte Marie to the head of Lake Superior and the Manitoba border, an area too far west for the main frame. A note beneath the title explains that "the electoral counties are shown in tints," and the county pattern is indeed washed in alternating pale color blocks to distinguish one riding from the next.

Notes at the foot point to the adjoining Quebec, New York, Michigan and Minnesota maps. As with the other Canadian provincial sheets in the volume, the railroad detail, current to 1899, is the real point of interest: a decade of branch-line construction across southern Ontario is recorded at a level no smaller-scale continental map could match.

Rand McNally grew from a Chicago printing business begun in the 1850s by William Rand and joined by Andrew McNally, and by the 1890s it was one of the leading map publishers in the United States, known for railroad maps revised from issue to issue. This antique map of Ontario is an original 1899 atlas sheet, printed as a color lithograph with the outline in black and the colors printed over it, and 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, even age toning, clean margins 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.