Kentucky Map 1935 Pictorial Print - Frankfort, Louisville, Lexington

Ruth Taylor White drew this pictorial map of Kentucky for Our U.S.A., A Gay Geography, a whimsical cartoon atlas published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1935 with text by Frank J. Taylor, covering all 48 states in fifty-eight full-color illustrated sheets. This sheet appears on page 43 of the atlas, printed in bright lithographed color and filled with small hand-drawn scenes rather than any conventional survey detail, a style built to entertain a Depression-era audience as much as inform it. Kentucky is shown here through the lens of the industries and landmarks that defined its popular identity in the 1930s, tobacco, horses, and its famous cave country chief among them. Ruth Taylor White and Frank Taylor built the atlas as a joint effort, her illustrations paired with his short, wry captions, and the finished sheets sold well enough during the Depression that Little, Brown kept the title in print for several years after its first release.

Mammoth Cave is illustrated as one of the map's central landmarks, already a major tourist draw decades before it became a national park in 1941. The Kentucky Derby appears near Louisville, a direct nod to the state's association with thoroughbred racing. Berea College is marked in the state's eastern hill country, and tobacco and corn farming are illustrated prominently across the central counties, the crops that anchored Kentucky's agricultural economy at the time. Together the cave, the Derby, and the tobacco fields sketch a Kentucky defined by a specific mix of natural wonder, sport, and farming.

A Kentucky family with roots in the bluegrass or cave country will recognize this map's take on the state immediately, and it makes a distinctive gift for anyone who prefers a whimsical, Depression-era view of Kentucky to a conventional antique survey. The store's other Kentucky editions include Tanner's 1838 and 1839 sheets and Cram's later 19th-century printings, all standard survey-style cartography; this 1935 Little, Brown sheet is the only pictorial, cartoon-style map of the state the collection carries. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.