Colorado in 1883 - Denver, Rocky Mountains, South Platte River, Arkansas River

Charles S. Sargent, Arnold Professor of Arboriculture at Harvard, compiled this Density of Forests map of Colorado in 1883 for the Tenth Census's Report on the Forests of North America, one of sixteen color-lithographed maps printed by Julius Bien & Co. that documented American forest cover in a level of detail never before assembled by the federal government. Rather than showing roads, towns, or railroads, the map is built entirely around a legend measuring cords of wood per area, a thematic approach that made this atlas volume unlike any other state map series of its time. Colorado's dramatic mountain terrain made it a particularly rich subject for this kind of survey, its forests concentrated along the high country rather than spread evenly across the state.

Denver appears as a reference point along the eastern plains, though the map's real focus lies west, across the Rocky Mountains that dominate Colorado's center. The South Platte River, draining the northern Front Range toward Denver, and the Arkansas River, cutting south through the state's central mining country, both appear as key drainage features bordering the forested mountain zones. County boundaries are shown alongside the forest density shading, allowing a viewer to see exactly how heavily timbered each part of the state remained in the early 1880s, information of direct use to the era's fast-growing lumber industry. The map's careful county-by-county shading gives foresters and lumbermen alike a clear sense of where the state's most valuable stands of timber remained untouched.

This scientific forestry sheet stands apart from the settlement and railroad-focused Colorado maps that dominate the rest of this collection, offering instead a rare government view of the state's natural resources at a moment when lumber, alongside silver, was becoming a serious Colorado industry. It is a distinctive find for a forester, a Colorado outdoorsman, or a collector drawn to unusual nineteenth-century government cartography. This print ships unframed and is available in multiple sizes.