Colorado in 1899 - Denver, Leadville, Cripple Creek

George F. Cram published this map of Colorado in Chicago in 1899, printed using the cerographic wax-engraving process invented by the Morse family in the 1830s, a technique that had gone on to revolutionize American commercial mapmaking during the 1880s through firms like Cram and Rand McNally. The map arrives just three years after Cripple Creek's gold discovery touched off one of the last great Colorado mining rushes, and it captures a state whose economy remained deeply tied to the fortunes of its mountain mining districts even as agriculture and ranching expanded steadily across the eastern plains.

Colored by county, the map records towns, mountains, mines, railroads, railroad stations, post offices, rivers, and forts across the state in dense detail. Denver anchors the Front Range as the capital and rail hub connecting Colorado's mining towns to national markets, while Leadville, still producing silver despite the setback of the 1893 Silver Panic, and Cripple Creek, then in the midst of a gold boom that briefly made it one of the richest square miles on earth, mark two of the state's most storied mining districts. The dense scattering of mine symbols across the mountain counties on this sheet reflects just how central extraction remained to Colorado's identity at the close of the nineteenth century, even as the state's population and economy were beginning to diversify.

This map is a fine gift for a family with Colorado mining roots, for a transplant now settled along the Front Range, or for a collector assembling Cram's Colorado maps across successive years. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.