Arizona in 1883 - Phoenix, Tucson, Prescott

George Franklin Cram published this Arizona map in 1883 for A.C. Shewey & Co. of Chicago, part of Cram's Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World, the first mass-produced world atlas to carry his name. The atlas ran to 65 maps and would continue in various editions for decades afterward, but this first printing is the one collectors chase.

The map covers Arizona Territory at a scale of roughly 1:2,240,000, with the state boundary picked out in red and relief shown through hachure shading. The Colorado River is marked as a defining feature, and the sheet shows Arizona's borders with California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, and Mexico to the south, along with the railroads that were opening up the territory to settlement and trade. The Southern Pacific had only reached Tucson three years before this map was printed, and the campaigns against Geronimo and the Chiricahua Apache were still an active, unresolved chapter of the territory's history at the time.

A print like this suits anyone with Arizona roots, a desert transplant who wants a piece of the territory on the wall, or a collector chasing Cram's earliest mass-produced atlas maps. It ships unframed and is offered in multiple print sizes, a fitting housewarming, birthday, or anniversary gift.