Texas in 1864 - Houston, San Antonio, El Paso

Samuel Augustus Mitchell Jr. of Philadelphia issued this County Map of Texas in 1864, part of the New General Atlas he had published since taking over his father's business from Charles DeSilver in 1860. The map is dissected diagonally by the historic Santa Fe Route, with early railroads shown radiating outward from Houston toward the interior, and this example carries an especially dark, crisp impression of the sheet's decorative border. It depicts Texas deep into the Civil War, a Confederate state whose vast western reaches, organized into only four enormous jurisdictions, El Paso, Presidio, Bexar Territory, and Young Territory, remained essentially beyond the reach of any effective government, wartime or otherwise.

Houston anchors the map as the hub from which the state's early railroad lines radiate, tying the interior cotton counties to the Gulf coast. San Antonio, further west along the Santa Fe Route, sits amid the older mission country near the edge of organized settlement. El Paso, isolated on the Rio Grande at the state's far western tip, gives its name to one of the four oversized frontier counties, alongside Presidio, Bexar Territory, and Young Territory, that together cover roughly half the state's land area with almost none of its population. A large inset of Galveston Bay rounds out the sheet, recording the coastal approach that the Union naval blockade had made a matter of wartime urgency.

This map suits a Texas family, a Houston or San Antonio transplant, or a Civil War-era collector interested in the state's four-county frontier configuration. The store also carries several other Mitchell-firm Texas maps from the 1850s and 1860s; this 1864 edition is distinguished by its dark, sharply printed decorative border and its detailed Galveston Bay inset. It is available unframed in a range of sizes, from a small accent print to a large statement piece.