Oregon in 1889 - Salem, Portland, Astoria

This map of Oregon was engraved and published by Rand McNally & Co. of Chicago in 1889 for their Business Atlas and Shippers' Guide, by then in its eighteenth edition and one of the most trusted commercial reference atlases in the country. Rand McNally printed this sheet in full color, with each county outlined and railroad lines picked out for quick reference, and relief shown by hachures across the Cascades and the Coast Range, a combination built for the traveling salesmen and shippers who relied on the firm's guides to plan routes. By 1889 Oregon had been a state for three decades, and the recent completion of the Northern Pacific and Oregon Short Line railroads had opened the interior to a new wave of settlement and freight traffic that this map was designed to track.

Salem continued to serve as Oregon's state capital, seated in the agricultural heart of the Willamette Valley. Portland, connected by rail to the transcontinental lines only a few years earlier, had grown into the dominant commercial center of the Pacific Northwest. Astoria, at the mouth of the Columbia River, remained the state's principal seaport for the salmon and timber trades that drove much of its early export economy. Together these three centers of government, commerce and shipping sketch a state whose railroad network, so prominent on this sheet, was actively reshaping where people and goods moved.

This map is a fitting gift for anyone with ties to Portland's shipping trade, the Willamette Valley farming country, or Oregon's Columbia River communities. Alongside this 1889 Rand McNally edition we also carry Oregon as mapped by Edgar Williams & Co. in 1878, by Mitchell in 1877 with Washington, Idaho and Montana, and by Asher & Adams in 1874; this sheet is the one to choose for its later, more developed railroad network and its crisp county-by-county color. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.