Iowa in 1893 - Des Moines, Cedar Rapids, Davenport

Wood Brothers Cash Store of Unadilla, New York, used George Cram's 1893 atlas as a customer premium, and the Iowa map inside it is a straightforward example of the kind of practical reference the store's owners must have thought worth giving away: a detailed political map of a state neither the store nor most of its customers had likely ever visited, bound into a book celebrating that year's Chicago World's Fair.

Printed at 1:2,000,000 on a page roughly 31 by 25 centimeters, the Iowa sheet uses red lines for county boundaries and thicker lines for the state border, with dense, small-type labeling for the state's many townships and county seats. Rivers are marked in blue, and the map carries both Greenwich and Washington as prime meridians. Population and area figures in square miles are printed alongside the geography, giving the sheet a statistical dimension beyond its political boundaries.

It's well suited to an Iowa family, a relative who's since left the state, or a collector building out a full set of Cram's 1893 state maps. Sold unframed and offered in multiple sizes, it makes an easy gift for a housewarming, a birthday, or any occasion where a piece of the state's history on the wall would mean something.