Alaska in 1887 - Sitka, Juneau, Kodiak

George F. Cram of Chicago published this map of Alaska in 1887, twenty years after the United States purchased the territory from Russia and roughly a decade before the Klondike gold rush would draw the world's attention north. Cram had built his firm into one of the country's leading atlas publishers by adopting the cerographic, or wax-engraving, process, which let him revise printing plates quickly and cheaply as new geographic information came in. This particular sheet falls into a quiet interval in Alaska's American history, after the initial Russian-era settlements had been absorbed into the new territory but before large-scale mining brought a wave of American prospectors and infrastructure.

The map lays out Alaska's vast coastline and interior in the sparse, uncluttered style typical of Cram's territorial sheets from this period, tracing the Panhandle around Sitka and Juneau, the Aleutian chain, and the broad sweep of the Yukon River basin. Sitka, the former Russian capital, and Juneau, which had only recently emerged as a mining town following an 1880 gold strike, anchor the settled southeast coast, while Kodiak marks the older Russian trading post further west along the Gulf of Alaska. The interior remains largely an empty expanse of rivers and mountain ranges, a fair reflection of how little of Alaska's vast landmass had been surveyed by American cartographers just two decades after the purchase.

This map is a fitting gift for a family with Alaska ties, for a transplant now settled in Juneau or Anchorage, or for a collector assembling early American-era maps of the territory. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes.