Maine in 1874 - Augusta, Portland, Bangor

This Maine map is part of Asher & Adams' New Commercial, Topographical, and Statistical Atlas and Gazetteer of the United States, published in New York in 1874, one of the first American atlases built around railroad lines rather than general topography. By 1874 Maine's economy had shifted well past the Aroostook Valley border disputes of a generation earlier, its shipbuilding and timber trade now facing new competition from steam power even as the state's rail network, still expanding, was starting to open the interior to the same commercial reach the coast had always enjoyed. Titled Maine, N.B. on the original sheet, the map also extends to cover portions of neighboring New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Quebec, engraved and electrotyped at the Franklin Type Foundry.

An inset accompanies the main map, with distances along the rail network marked across the state in the atlas's commercial style, part of a volume of 41 maps from the most complete late-1874 edition.

Maine natives scattered far from the coast often gravitate toward this one, a Down East transplant, or a collector of Gilded Age railroad atlases. Compared to our 1838 Bradford-era Maine sheet, published when the Aroostook border dispute was still an open wound, this one shows a state settled into its borders and increasingly tied together by rail rather than river and coastline alone. The print is offered unframed and in multiple sizes.