Maryland, Delaware, and Washington D.C. in 1879 - Baltimore, Wilmington, Washington D.C.

This map of Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Delaware was published in 1879 by Rand McNally & Co. of Chicago, as part of the fourth edition of their Business Atlas, one of the great American commercial atlases of the post-Civil War railroad era. Rand McNally's atlas cartography was prized for its clarity and its functional emphasis on named railroad lines, information vital to the merchants, shippers, and investors who relied on it, and this sheet is finished in outline color with a separate inset detailing western Maryland's more mountainous terrain. It covers the small but strategically important cluster of Maryland, Delaware, and the District of Columbia, three jurisdictions bound together by the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River even as they retained sharply distinct identities. By 1879, Washington stood firmly established as the nation's federal capital while Maryland and Delaware were long-settled states whose economies were being reshaped by the rapid expansion of rail.

Washington is marked at the heart of the sheet as the seat of federal government, its growth by this date driven as much by post-war administration as by its original role as the nation's planned capital. Maryland's story on this map is one of contrast between the tidewater counties along the Chesapeake, long given over to tobacco and grain, and the more rugged, mineral-rich terrain of the western counties singled out in the inset. Delaware, tucked between the Delaware River and Chesapeake Bay, was by this period a small but industrious state built around milling, shipbuilding, and river trade. Together these three jurisdictions, one of the most historically layered corners of the Eastern Seaboard, share a common story of proximity to the Chesapeake and the corridors of federal power.

This map makes a fitting gift for anyone with family roots in Maryland's Eastern Shore, Delaware's river towns, or Washington itself, as well as for collectors drawn to the commercial railroad atlases that mapped Gilded Age America state by state. Rand McNally's Business Atlas was among the most widely used reference works of its day, valued then as now for its clean outline coloring and its faithful record of the rail network binding these three jurisdictions together. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.