Indiana in 1883 - Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville

This Indiana map is drawn from Cram's Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World, copyrighted 1883 by George Franklin Cram and published in Chicago by A.C. Shewey and Co., a first edition remembered as Cram's first "mass production" world atlas. The sixty-five-map volume was built to bring detailed, current geography to a wide American audience.

Indiana is printed here in color at a scale of about 1:1,560,000, with the state bordered in red and its counties outlined in green, relief indicated through hachures. Railroads are prominently marked throughout, reflecting their importance to Indiana's economy in the 1880s, and the sheet carries printed population and area figures for the state alongside its rivers and lakes. The National Road, the country's first major federally funded highway, cuts east to west across the map's center through Indianapolis, a route settlers and traders had used for decades before the railroads shown here took over most of that traffic. Both Greenwich and Washington prime meridians appear on the map.

This print suits anyone with Indiana roots, a family that farmed near one of these counties generations back, a transplant who left the Hoosier State, or a collector building a run of Cram's 1883 atlas maps. It also makes a fitting housewarming, birthday, or anniversary gift. Every print ships unframed and comes in multiple sizes.