Colorado in 1873 - Denver, Central City, Georgetown, Colorado Springs

H. L. Thayer published this pocket map of Colorado in 1873 through the Denver firm Richards & Co., engraved by Rufus Blanchard and sold folded into stiff cardboard covers for fifty cents, the smaller-format edition of Thayer's map appearing for the first time this year. As a pocket map rather than an atlas sheet, this was a practical, portable reference meant to travel with the prospectors, surveyors, and settlers pouring into Colorado Territory during its gold and silver boom, three years before statehood arrived in 1876. The map renders the territory's counties in full color, a level of local detail suited to a rapidly subdividing frontier. Folded rather than bound, the map was designed to travel easily in a coat pocket or saddlebag, a practical format suited to the territory's still-rugged conditions.

Denver, the territorial capital and supply center for the mountain mining districts, anchors the map's eastern plains. Central City and Georgetown, both deep in the mountains west of Denver, represent the heart of Colorado's gold and silver rush, boomtowns that had drawn thousands of prospectors within a few short years. Colorado Springs, founded only two years earlier in 1871 as a planned resort community at the foot of Pikes Peak, marks the territory's newer, more genteel development. Together these towns capture Colorado's dual identity in 1873 as both a raw mining frontier and an emerging tourist destination.

Published locally in Denver rather than by an Eastern or Chicago atlas house, this Thayer pocket map offers a more grassroots view of the territory than the 1875 Cram railroad map or the 1879 Rand McNally sheets also found in this collection, all mapping Colorado within a few years of each other but for very different audiences. This piece appeals to a collector of Western pocket maps or anyone with roots in Colorado's gold rush towns. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.