Arkansas Map 1845 State Print - Little Rock, Fort Smith, Pine Bluff

Sidney Morse and Samuel Breese, working in New York, published this map of Arkansas in 1845 as part of Morse's North American Atlas, issued by Harper & Brothers across nine illustrated parts sold for twenty-five cents apiece. Morse and Breese pioneered the cerographic wax-engraving process used to print the map, a technique cheaper than copper-plate engraving that let Harper's sell four full-color maps per part at a fraction of the price of comparable engraved sheets, and this sheet carries an explanation panel decoding its symbols for towns, roads, railroads, and canals. Arkansas is shown here just nine years after statehood, its settlement still concentrated in the eastern lowlands along the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers while the western uplands remained only lightly organized.

Little Rock anchors the map as the state capital, a river town on the Arkansas chosen for its central position between the settled east and the still-frontier west. The Mississippi River forms the state's entire eastern border, the primary route by which Arkansas cotton reached the wider market. The Arkansas River cuts across the state's midsection past the capital itself, a second major artery for trade and settlement. Together the young capital and the two rivers sketch a state whose growth, less than a decade into statehood, still ran almost entirely along its waterways rather than any road or rail network.

An Arkansas family with roots in the old river-bottom counties will recognize this sheet's world directly, and it suits a collector marking the state in its first full decade as part of the Union. The store also carries Arkansas from Cram's 1878 railroad-and-township edition and his later 1893 and 1883 printings, all drawn after rail lines had reorganized the state's trade well beyond the two rivers shown here; this 1845 Morse sheet is the earliest Arkansas map in the collection. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.