Alaska Map 1959 Pictorial Print - Juneau, Anchorage, Fairbanks

This pictorial map titled Alaska: Far North Frontier was created by Klengston Rude and published in 1959 by his own Kleng Rude Studio in Studio City, California, distributed under the Alaska Arts imprint the very year Alaska became the forty-ninth state of the Union. At over a meter wide, the sheet is dominated by richly illustrated scenes of wildlife, agricultural products, oil fields, and fisheries rather than plain cartographic notation, and its border is worked in a geometric beadwork pattern drawn directly from Northwest Coast indigenous artwork. It covers Alaska in full along with a section of British Columbia, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories to the east, and it was published at the precise moment the territory's decades-long campaign for statehood finally succeeded.

Six circular illustrations run along the map's edges tracing Alaskan history from Vitus Bering's 1741 voyage of exploration through the 1867 purchase from Russia, the 1897 gold discoveries, and on to statehood itself in 1959. Mountain ranges are drawn in aerial perspective and glaciers are shaded white across the interior, while rivers, straits, sounds, and both existing and proposed highways are marked in detail. A compass rose over the Gulf of Alaska combines the American and Alaskan flags, and a large illustration of a Native American totem pole dominates the Canadian portion of the sheet to the east. Taken as a whole, the map reads as a celebration of Alaska's arrival as a full state rather than a purely functional geographic reference.

A connection to Alaska statehood itself makes this map a natural pick, whether through family history, a move to the state, or simply an interest in that pivotal 1959 moment, and its pictorial warmth suits a home or cabin far better than a dry reference chart. Alaska buyers should note we also carry Eric Lee and George Crowe's 1969 flight-planning map of the same territory; where that sheet was built for working bush pilots, this one was made to be admired and to commemorate a historic year. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.