Hawaii in 1911 - Honolulu, Hilo, Lahaina

Rand McNally & Company published this decorative map of Hawaii in Chicago in 1911, thirteen years after the islands' annexation by the United States, by which point the firm had grown from a small Chicago print shop into one of the country's most trusted names in commercial cartography. The map includes inset plans of Honolulu and what it labels the Western Islands, reflecting the growing American interest in the territory's geography as Hawaii's strategic and commercial importance to the Pacific grew in the years following annexation and the establishment of Pearl Harbor as a naval station.

Telegraph lines, shipping routes, and the Pacific Cable, completed in 1902 to link Hawaii with the American mainland and beyond to Asia, are all marked across the map, underscoring the islands' emerging role as a communications and transportation hub in the Pacific. Honolulu, on Oahu, anchors the territory as its capital and principal port, Hilo serves as the Big Island's main harbor town, and Lahaina, the former capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom before Honolulu's rise, remains an important historic town on Maui. The map's attention to telegraph and shipping infrastructure reflects how thoroughly Hawaii's identity had shifted, within a single generation, from an independent Pacific kingdom to an increasingly integrated American territorial possession.

This map is a fine gift for a family with Hawaii roots, for a transplant now settled in Honolulu or on Maui, or for a collector of early twentieth-century territorial maps. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.