Indiana Map 1884 State Print - Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Evansville

Samuel Augustus Mitchell Jr., working through Wm. M. Bradley & Bro. of Philadelphia, issued this Indiana sheet in 1884, part of his New General Atlas published in 1886. This printing is hand-colored, its counties shaded distinctly across a state whose agricultural and rail economy had, by the 1880s, matured considerably since the canal-era decades captured in this collection's earlier Indiana maps. The sheet maps Indiana statewide, showing settlements, railroads, and rivers across a state fully subdivided into its modern county structure.

Indiana's counties are laid out across the sheet in Mitchell's characteristic style, a settlement pattern filled in evenly across the state by the 1880s compared to the more concentrated eastern settlement of earlier decades. Railroads thread throughout the state in a dense network, having long since eclipsed the canal system that once carried much of Indiana's trade. Rivers, including the Wabash and White systems, are worked into the base map beneath the county and rail detail. Together the counties, the railroads, and the rivers sketch a state whose 1884 economy had moved decisively past its earlier canal-building era, its farm counties now tied to national markets by rail rather than by the slower barge traffic of decades before.

For an Indiana family with late-19th-century roots, or a collector building out the state's maps across the decades, this sheet has a specific pull. The store also carries Indiana from Cram's 1893 and 1883 editions, Bradford's 1838 atlas, Tanner's earlier 1841 sheet, and combined with Ohio in Asher & Adams' 1874 atlas; this 1884 Mitchell sheet is the only one of the group built around Indiana's fully matured, canal-free rail economy. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.