Colorado in 1876 - Denver, Central City, Georgetown

O.W. Gray of Philadelphia published this map of Colorado in 1876, the very year Colorado achieved statehood, as part of Gray's National Atlas, one of the most commercially successful American atlases of the 1870s and among the last major atlases to rely on hand coloring rather than the cerographic printing methods then coming into wider use. Gray's firm, later continued as O. W. Gray & Son, built a solid reputation for detailed state and county maps during the decade, and this sheet captures Colorado at the very start of its statehood era, before the second wave of southwestern mining strikes had reshaped the state's mountain geography.

Towns, rivers, lakes, roads, and mountains are recorded across the state, colored by county, with a large area of Lake County still labeled as Ute Indian Reservation, land that had not yet been opened to the mining rushes that would soon transform the region. Denver anchors the Front Range as the new state's capital, while Central City and Georgetown, both established during Colorado's original 1859 gold rush along Clear Creek, represent the state's earlier and by this point well-established mining economy. Notably absent from the map are Montrose, Ouray, Dolores, and San Juan counties, along with any hint of the mining boom soon to center on Silverton, Ouray, and Durango, a reminder that Colorado's southwestern mountains remained essentially unmapped frontier as late as its first year of statehood.

This map is a meaningful gift for a family with Colorado roots, for a transplant now settled along the Front Range, or for a collector of statehood-year maps. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.