Puerto Rico Map 1902 Regional Print - San Juan, Ponce, Vieques

This map of Puerto Rico was published in Chicago in 1902 by George F. Cram, the Civil War veteran and mapmaker who had founded his company with his uncle Rufus Blanchard in Evanston, Illinois, in 1867 before becoming sole proprietor two years later and building the firm into one of the leading American atlas publishers of the era, known best for its long-running Unrivaled Atlas of the World. This sheet divides Puerto Rico into seven administrative districts, each rendered in its own distinct color, creating a vivid mosaic that captures the island's varied geography at a glance. The map appeared just four years after the Treaty of Paris ended the Spanish-American War and transferred Puerto Rico from Spanish to American control, a transition the map itself reflects directly through its mix of English and Spanish place names on a single sheet.

Three insets accompany the main map: a detailed view of San Juan, and smaller maps of Crab Island and Culebra Island, with the San Juan inset in particular showing Cram's close attention to the capital's street network, forts and harbor. Puerto Rico had only briefly enjoyed self-governance under Spain's 1897 Carta Autonomica before the Spanish-American War intervened the following year, and the map captures the island soon after the 1900 Foraker Act established a civilian American government there, though residents would not receive U.S. citizenship for another fifteen years. The bilingual place-naming throughout the sheet is a quiet but telling marker of this transitional period, as American administrators began overlaying English names onto a landscape long mapped in Spanish. Puerto Rico's economy was likewise shifting at this moment, moving from subsistence farming toward a cash-crop economy built around sugar, tobacco and coffee.

It is a fitting choice for a collector of Spanish-American War-era cartography or for anyone with Puerto Rican family roots reaching back to the island's transition to American rule. A closely related 1911 Cram edition of the same map, expanded to include the Virgin Islands, sits elsewhere in this collection; this earlier 1902 printing predates that addition and offers the simpler, seven-district view of Puerto Rico alone. It is offered unframed in a full range of sizes to suit any wall.