Idaho in 1881 - Boise, Lewiston, Silver City

Samuel Augustus Mitchell, Jr. published this map of Idaho Territory in Philadelphia in 1881, one of the earliest maps of Idaho to appear in a commercial American atlas. Mitchell had inherited his father's publishing firm in 1860 and continued its tradition of finely engraved school atlases and wall maps for more than three decades, steadily updating the company's steel plates to keep pace with the rapid territorial subdivisions occurring across the American West during his tenure. This sheet shows only thirteen counties, with Washington and Cass counties among the territory's most recently added, capturing Idaho at what the firm's own description calls the earliest obtainable stage of its commercial atlas mapping.

Towns, mountains, rivers, Indian reservations, and forts are recorded across the territory, along with some early township surveying and the distinctive Rocky Desert of Lava and Basalt spreading across the southern plains. Boise anchors the territorial capital in the southwest, Lewiston continues to serve the northern panhandle as its historic river port, and Silver City, high in the Owyhee Mountains, marks one of the territory's richest silver mining districts, a boomtown whose population briefly rivaled that of the capital itself during its peak years. The map's combination of sparse settlement and dramatic volcanic terrain reflects Idaho's continuing identity in 1881 as one of the least developed and most geographically extreme territories in the American West.

This map is a fine gift for a family with Idaho roots, for a transplant now settled in Boise or the Owyhee country, or for a collector of early Idaho territorial maps. It is offered unframed in a range of sizes.