Alaska Map 1943 Territorial Print - Juneau, Fairbanks, Anchorage

This map of Alaska was produced by the Matthews-Northrup Division of the J.W. Clement Co. in Buffalo, New York, and published in 1943 in The New Matthews-Northrup Global Atlas of the World at War, an atlas built around invasion routes tracing the Second World War. Despite that wartime backdrop, the Alaska page was rendered as a standard reference map, titled simply "ALASKA" in a decorative box, with a mileage scale and a legend distinguishing capitals from other settlements by type size, much as a peacetime state map would appear. It covers the Alaska Territory from the Bering Strait and an inset of the Aleutian Islands down to the Yukon and British Columbia border, printed the same year Japanese forces were being pushed from the Aleutians and the Alaska Highway was being built to link the territory to the rest of North America.

Juneau, the territorial capital, is marked among the map's labeled capitals, its type sized to stand apart from ordinary towns per the legend. Fairbanks appears in the interior, a hub tied to the overland routes then being pushed north. Anchorage is shown along the southern coast, already emerging as a key military and transportation center. The Bering Strait separates Alaska from Siberia at the map's northwest edge, while an inset extends coverage to the Aleutian Islands strung out into the Pacific. The territory's boundary with the Yukon and British Columbia runs along the eastern edge, anchoring Alaska within its Canadian context. Together these features present a working reference map of a remote territory suddenly thrust into wartime prominence.

This 1943 Matthews-Northrup edition makes a distinctive gift for anyone with Alaska family roots, a recent move to the state, or a collector assembling a run of Alaska maps. TheMapVault carries several other Alaska editions, including a 1969 flight planning map, a 1959 "Far North Frontier" map, an 1879 Rand McNally, and George Cram editions from 1883 and 1893, but this is the only one drawn from a wartime atlas, printed the year the Aleutian campaign and Alaska Highway construction made the territory a wartime focal point. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.