Colorado in 1874 - Denver, Breckenridge, Fairplay

Asher & Adams of New York published this map of Colorado Territory in 1874, part of their Atlas of the United States, a New York publication known for being among the first American atlases to give railroad lines equal billing with topography, occasionally at the expense of finer terrain detail. Asher & Adams built their reputation specializing in state and county maps rather than sweeping national or world atlases, and this sheet stands as one of the earliest obtainable large-format separate maps of Colorado Territory and the first to appear in a commercial atlas, published two years before Colorado achieved statehood in 1876.

Early township surveys spread across the eastern plains around Denver, while the map traces the Denver & South Platte, Kansas Pacific, Colorado Central, Denver & Rio Grande, and Denver Pacific railroads fanning out from the territorial capital toward the mountains. South of the Continental Divide, towns remain scarce, with only Breckenridge, Fair Play, Canon City, Greenwood, Colfax, Fort Garland, San Luis, and Saguache marked across the high country, a fair reflection of how thinly the mining and ranching frontier had spread into Colorado's southern mountain valleys by the mid-1870s. The concentration of rail lines around Denver, contrasted with the sparse settlement further south, captures Colorado precisely at the moment its Front Range corridor was pulling ahead of the rest of the territory economically.

This map is a fitting gift for a family with Colorado roots, for a transplant now settled in Denver or the high country, or for a collector of early territorial railroad maps. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.