Illinois in 1893 - Chicago, Springfield, Peoria

Illinois has a special claim on this atlas: Chicago, the state's largest city, was the host of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition that the entire volume was produced to commemorate. George Cram's Illinois map sat at the heart of The Columbian World's Fair Atlas, the book Wood Brothers Cash Store of Unadilla, New York, gave to its customers that year, pairing a statewide map with the exposition's own illustrated grounds and buildings elsewhere in the volume.

The sheet is printed at 1:1,900,000 on a 23-by-31-centimeter page, with county boundaries in red outline coloring and both Greenwich and Washington marked as prime meridians. Chicago itself anchors the northeastern corner of the map, its position underscoring the city's importance as the fair's host and as the region's commercial and rail hub. Railroads fan out across the county grid, and rivers and lake frontage are picked out in blue, rounding out a sheet that's as much about Illinois's infrastructure as its political boundaries.

It's a solid choice for an Illinois family, someone who's since moved out of state, or a collector rounding out a set of Cram's 1893 maps. Available unframed and in multiple sizes, it makes an easy housewarming or birthday gift for anyone with a connection to Illinois or Chicago.