Maine Map 1882 Township Print - Portland, Bangor, Augusta

Samuel Augustus Mitchell Jr., working through Wm. M. Bradley & Bro. of Philadelphia, issued this Maine sheet in 1882, part of his New General Atlas published in 1886, a later 19th-century production built around county and township detail rather than the transportation-first styling common to earlier decades. This printing is hand-colored with relief shown through hachures, its county lines and township divisions rendered with a level of administrative precision that reflects Maine's fully settled, decades-old statehood by the time this sheet went to press. The sheet maps Maine statewide, showing settlements, railroads, and rivers across a state whose rail network, unlike its 1840s counterpart, had by 1882 grown into a mature system connecting its coast to its interior.

Maine's counties and townships are each laid out distinctly, a level of granular administrative detail that reflects how thoroughly surveyed and organized the state had become by the 1880s compared to its earlier decades. Railroads are marked running through the state, a network built out over the four decades since Maine's earlier maps in this collection, connecting towns that once depended primarily on coastal shipping. Rivers and settlements round out the sheet's geography, tracing patterns of growth built up over Maine's first sixty years of statehood. Together the counties, the railroads, and the settlements sketch a state whose infrastructure had fully matured since its earlier, more sparsely developed decades.

For a Maine family with roots that stretch back to the late 19th century, someone who's settled in the state more recently, or a collector building out Maine's maps across the decades, this sheet has a specific pull. The store also carries Maine from Cram's 1893 edition, Bradford's 1838 atlas, and Tanner's earlier 1840 sheet; this 1882 Mitchell sheet is the only one of the group built around fully developed township and railroad detail rather than the sparser coastal-focus of the state's earlier maps. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.