South Dakota Map 1935 Pictorial Print - Pierre, Rapid City, Sioux Falls

Ruth Taylor White drew this pictorial map of South Dakota for Our U.S.A., A Gay Geography, a whimsical cartoon atlas published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1935 with text by Frank J. Taylor, covering all 48 states in fifty-eight full-color illustrated sheets. This sheet appears on page 95 of the atlas, printed in bright lithographed color and filled with small hand-drawn scenes rather than any conventional survey detail, a style built to entertain a Depression-era audience as much as inform it. South Dakota is shown here through its agricultural prominence, corn and wheat farming dominating the map's imagery just as they dominated the state's Depression-era economy. Ruth Taylor White and Frank Taylor built the atlas as a joint effort, her illustrations paired with his short, wry captions, and the finished sheets sold well enough during the Depression that Little, Brown kept the title in print for several years after its first release.

Pierre, Rapid City, and Sioux Falls are all marked among the state's major towns, each with its own small illustration. Cornfields and wheat fields spread across much of the map's farmland, the crops most associated with South Dakota agriculture at the time. Livestock and general farming scenes fill in the remaining countryside, while illustrations tied to the state's Native culture and regional landmarks round out the map's imagery. Together the three named towns and the farming scenes sketch a South Dakota defined almost entirely by its agricultural economy. A handful of smaller farming towns and rail junctions are sketched in around Pierre, Rapid City, and Sioux Falls, filling out a state whose economy ran almost entirely through its grain elevators and stockyards.

A South Dakota family with farming roots will recognize this map's take on the state immediately, and it makes a distinctive gift for anyone who prefers a whimsical, Depression-era view of South Dakota to a conventional antique survey. The store's other Dakota-region editions include Cram's 1878 undivided-territory sheet and his later 1893 and 1883 printings, all standard survey-style cartography; this 1935 Little, Brown sheet is the only pictorial, cartoon-style map of South Dakota the collection carries. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.