Nevada Map 1892 State Print - Las Vegas, Reno, Carson City

Rand McNally & Company published this large-format map of Nevada in 1892 as part of its Business Atlas, one of the most widely circulated commercial reference atlases in the country by the late nineteenth century. The firm had begun in 1856 as a Chicago print shop under William Rand, joined two years later by Andrew McNally, and by the 1890s Rand McNally's use of a cheaper wax-engraving process, first adopted for an 1872 railway guide, had helped the company become a dominant force in American commercial cartography. This Nevada sheet is beautifully colored and dense with statistical annotation, characteristic of the Business Atlas format aimed squarely at merchants, bankers and travelers rather than decorative wall-map buyers.

Carson City anchors the map as Nevada's state capital, chosen for its proximity to the Comstock Lode rather than for size. Reno appears as the state's fast-growing rail and commercial center on the Truckee River, benefiting from its position on the transcontinental line. Virginia City continues to mark the Comstock district, though by 1892 well past the peak of its silver boom of the 1860s and 1870s. The Humboldt River threads across the state's northern reaches, and the Sierra Nevada rises along the California border to the west, framing a state whose towns, railroads and mountain ranges are all recorded in the careful, statistics-rich style Rand McNally's Business Atlas was known for.

This map suits a gift for a Nevada family with roots in the Comstock or the state's early railroad towns, or for a collector comparing successive Rand McNally Nevada editions. The store also carries the firm's near-identical 1888 Nevada sheet, letting a buyer track how little the state's basic geography changed across those four years even as its mining fortunes continued to ebb. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact print for a study to a large-format piece for an office or den.