Arizona Map 1899 Territorial Print - Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott

H.C. Tunison of Jacksonville, Illinois published this map of Arizona Territory in 1899, a scarce sheet notable for focusing on Arizona alone rather than pairing it with New Mexico as most contemporary commercial atlas maps did. Tunison ran a smaller regional publishing operation than giants like Rand McNally or Cram, and this map's singular focus on Arizona allowed for a level of internal detail that broader combined maps of the two territories typically sacrificed. Published a year after the Spanish-American War and more than a decade before statehood, the map documents a territory whose thirteen counties still governed a population concentrated almost entirely around its mining districts and irrigated river valleys.

The map colors each of Arizona's thirteen counties individually and records towns, roads, railroads, mountains, rivers, train stations, and mines in considerable detail. Phoenix, the territorial capital since 1889, anchors the irrigated farmland of the Salt River Valley, while Tucson remains the territory's largest and oldest commercial center along the Southern Pacific line, and Prescott continues to serve the mining economy of the central highlands. The density of mine symbols scattered across the map reflects how thoroughly Arizona's economy at the close of the nineteenth century still depended on copper, silver, and gold extraction rather than the citrus and cotton agriculture that would come to define the territory in the following decades.

This map makes a fine gift for a family with Arizona roots, for a transplant now settled in Phoenix or Tucson, or for a collector of turn-of-the-century territorial maps. It is available unframed in a range of sizes.