{"product_id":"illinois-map-1874-state-print-chicago-springfield-peoria","title":"Illinois Map 1874 State Print - Chicago, Springfield, Peoria","description":"\u003cp\u003eAsher \u0026amp; Adams, working out of New York, issued this Illinois sheet in 1874 as part of their New Commercial, Topographical, and Statistical Atlas and Gazetteer of the United States, one of the first American atlases built almost entirely around the country's expanding rail network rather than its terrain. This particular printing, produced late in 1874, is described by the firm as its most complete edition, hand-colored and engraved by the Franklin Type Foundry with noticeably more topographical shading worked in than the earlier printing issued the same year. The full statewide sheet arrived nine years after the Civil War's end, with Reconstruction winding down nationally even as Chicago, still just three years removed from the Great Fire of 1871, was rebuilding itself into the railroad hub the map's own emphasis on rail lines was built to track.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the sheet itself, only Lake Michigan is named outright, giving Chicago the harbor access that made it a magnet for grain, lumber, and rail traffic from across the Midwest. Illinois had reached that lake by way of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, open since 1848, linking the Great Lakes trade to the Mississippi further south well before this atlas went to press. Springfield had carried the state capital since 1839, a distinction inseparable from its identity as Abraham Lincoln's adopted hometown, while Peoria, sited on the Illinois River, had grown into one of the Midwest's principal distilling and milling towns on the same water traffic. None of that history appears in the map's own sparse, railroad-first styling, but it is the backdrop against which the rail lines it does show were being laid.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor anyone with Chicago roots, Illinois farm family history, or a collection built around the earliest American railroad atlases, this sheet has a pull the state's later maps don't quite match. The store also carries Illinois as mapped in Cram's 1893 Columbian World's Fair Atlas and his 1883 Unrivaled Family Atlas, both broader, more topographically detailed productions aimed at general household reference; this 1874 Asher \u0026amp; Adams sheet predates both and is the most purely railroad-focused, a starker style that reads as a working transportation document rather than a family atlas page. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"TheMapVault","offers":[{"title":"16x20 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228319563,"sku":"SKU1351-16x20","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A2 (42x60cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228352331,"sku":"SKU1351-A2","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"18x24 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228385099,"sku":"SKU1351-18x24","price":25.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"50x70 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228417867,"sku":"SKU1351-50x70","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A1 (60x84cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228450635,"sku":"SKU1351-A1","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"24x32 inch - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228483403,"sku":"SKU1351-24x32","price":40.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"70x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228516171,"sku":"SKU1351-70x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"75x100 cm - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228548939,"sku":"SKU1351-75x100","price":50.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"A0 (84x119cm) - UNFRAMED","offer_id":58512228581707,"sku":"SKU1351-A0","price":55.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0907\/2456\/5323\/files\/SKU1351.jpg?v=1789669906","url":"https:\/\/www.themapvault.com\/products\/illinois-map-1874-state-print-chicago-springfield-peoria","provider":"TheMapVault","version":"1.0","type":"link"}