Alaska Map 1890 Territorial Print - Sitka, Bering Sea, Arctic Circle

This map, titled Northwestern America Showing the Territory Ceded by Russia to the United States, was published in 1890 by John Y. Huber & Co. of Philadelphia as part of Mitchell's New General Atlas, the same publication that produced this batch's American railroad map but here turning its attention to the country's newest and least developed territory. The sheet is hand colored, using distinct washes to separate Alaska from the adjoining British Columbia and Yukon, with relief rendered in hachures and spot heights reduced from an official U.S. Coast Survey chart rather than drawn freehand. It covers Alaska together with the neighboring Canadian territory to the east, and it was issued more than two decades after the 1867 purchase, a deal so widely mocked at the time as "Seward's Folly" that this later map itself stands as evidence the criticism had already begun to look premature.

The Arctic Circle crosses the northern portion of the sheet, and the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean flank Alaska's coastline to the west and south, giving the map its clear oceanic boundaries. Settlements and rivers are marked in detail across the territory, with red boundary lines distinguishing the ceded Russian territory from British Columbia and Yukon to the east. The map's broad 1:11,900,000 scale still allows room for named geographic anchors like the Bering Strait, giving a sense of just how close Alaska sits to Russia itself. Produced by the same Mitchell firm responsible for detailed U.S. railroad mapping, the sheet reflects growing commercial confidence that Alaska's resources, including the gold and oil that would soon draw prospectors north, justified the original purchase price.

This map suits a collector building a set focused specifically on the Alaska Purchase and its aftermath, since its full title directly references the cession from Russia rather than treating Alaska as simply another American territory. Alaska buyers should note we also carry the same 1890 Mitchell atlas's railroad map of the lower forty-eight states; together the two sheets show how differently Mitchell treated a settled, tracked nation and a territory still labeled unexplored just over a decade earlier. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.