Idaho in 1882 - Boise, Lewiston, Idaho City

George F. Cram published this railroad and county map of Idaho Territory in Chicago in 1882, at a point when his firm's adoption of the cerographic wax-engraving process allowed it to keep pace with the rapidly expanding railroad networks then reaching into the sparsely settled Mountain West. Idaho Territory, created in 1863 out of a much larger original expanse that once included Montana and most of Wyoming, had by 1882 been whittled down to roughly its modern borders, though its population remained concentrated in scattered mining districts and agricultural pockets separated by vast stretches of largely unmapped mountain wilderness.

Railroads, towns, and cities are traced across the territory alongside its major mountain ranges, all set within the early county configurations that governed Idaho at the time. Boise, the territorial capital since 1865, anchors the southwestern valley along the Boise River, while Lewiston, Idaho's original territorial capital and a key Snake River port during the earlier gold rushes of the 1860s, continues to serve the northern panhandle, and Idaho City, once the largest town in the Pacific Northwest during the peak of the Boise Basin gold rush, marks the territory's mining heritage in the mountains east of the capital. Numerous early roads, rivers, mining areas, and Indian place names round out the map, reflecting a territory whose economy and settlement pattern remained deeply shaped by the mineral discoveries of the preceding two decades.

This map is a fitting gift for a family with Idaho roots, for a transplant now settled in Boise, or for a collector of early Idaho territorial railroad maps. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.