South Carolina in 1893 - Charleston, Columbia, Greenville

Chicago's 1893 World's Fair, officially the World's Columbian Exposition, was staged to mark four centuries since Columbus reached the Americas, and George F. Cram's publishing house tied its state atlas directly to that celebration. The volume was produced for Wood Brothers Cash Store of Unadilla, New York, and this sheet, covering South Carolina, is one of the ninety maps bound into it.

South Carolina appears here in outline hand color, its counties marked off in red and its depth along the coast indicated with isolines, a technique the atlas used to hint at underwater contours near the shore. Cities and towns are labeled at the map's scale of 1:1,500,000, and both the Greenwich and Washington prime meridians are referenced in the margin, matching the convention used throughout the rest of the atlas. The result is a clean, legible view of the state's counties and coastline as they stood in the early 1890s.

This print suits a South Carolina family with roots in one of these coastal or upcountry counties, someone who's relocated away from the state and misses it, or a collector assembling Cram's full run of 1893 state maps. It also makes a good housewarming or birthday gift for a South Carolinian. The map is printed unframed and offered in multiple sizes to suit different walls.