Nevada Map 1888 State Print - Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City

Rand McNally & Company issued this large-format map of Nevada in 1888 as part of its Business Atlas, four years before the firm's better-known 1892 edition of the same sheet. By the late 1880s Rand McNally, founded in Chicago in 1856 by William Rand and joined in 1868 by Andrew McNally, had built its reputation on a cheaper wax-engraving process first used for a railway guide back in 1872, allowing the firm to issue detailed, frequently updated state maps at a scale competitors struggled to match. This earlier state of the Nevada plate is beautifully colored and packed with statistical detail, reflecting the Business Atlas's core audience of merchants and travelers rather than decorative print buyers.

Carson City continues to serve as state capital, its position close to the Comstock Lode still shaping Nevada's political geography a full generation after the district's silver strikes began. Reno anchors the state's rail and commercial activity on the Truckee River, and Virginia City marks the Comstock district itself, by this date well past its 1870s peak but still a substantial town. Towns, rivers, railroads, mountains and lakes are recorded across the sheet in the same dense statistical style found on the firm's other Business Atlas state maps, with the Humboldt River tracing its familiar course across the state's arid northern basin.

This map makes a fitting gift for a Nevada family or a collector building out a run of Rand McNally state maps decade by decade. Set beside the store's 1892 Rand McNally Nevada edition, this 1888 printing lets a buyer directly compare two states of the same firm's plate only a few years apart, tracking the subtle updates Rand McNally made as the state's towns and railroads continued to develop. It is offered unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact print for a study to a large-format piece for an office or den.