Indiana in 1893 - Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville

The Columbian Exposition of 1893 turned Chicago into the center of American public attention for months, and George Cram's Columbian World's Fair Atlas was one of the more practical souvenirs to come out of the moment, distributed not at the fairgrounds but through Wood Brothers Cash Store, a general store in Unadilla, New York. Indiana, sitting just south of the exposition's host city, was naturally included among the atlas's ninety state and territory maps.

The Indiana sheet is printed at 1:1,700,000 across a 24-by-30-centimeter page, with county lines rendered in the atlas's standard red outline coloring and both Greenwich and Washington marked as prime meridians. Roads and railways are laid across the county grid, giving a sense of how the state's infrastructure connected its towns and farmland in the early 1890s. The engraving is fine enough that even at this modest scale, the county-level detail holds up well.

It suits an Indiana family looking to mark their roots, someone who's moved away and misses the state, or a collector working through Cram's full 1893 series one map at a time. The print is offered unframed and in multiple sizes, making it easy to find something right for a housewarming or a birthday gift.