Maine in 1859 - Portland, Bangor, Augusta, Bath

Samuel Augustus Mitchell's map of Maine, published by Charles Desilver in Philadelphia, appeared in this 1859 printing as part of the scarce final edition of Mitchell's New Universal Atlas, which had run continuously since Henry Tanner's first edition twenty-three years earlier in 1836. Tinted by county with relief shown by hachures and a table of population figures included on the sheet, the map documents Maine at the close of an atlas series known for its steady, careful updates across two decades of American growth. Several maps in this final edition carried subtle revisions from the prior year, a sign of Desilver's continued effort to keep the atlas current even as its long run neared its end.

Portland, Maine's largest city and principal port, anchors the map along the state's southern coast, its harbor central to the shipbuilding and maritime trade that defined much of Maine's economy. Bangor, on the Penobscot River, had grown into one of the world's great lumber ports, its mills processing timber floated downriver from the state's vast northern forests. Augusta, the state capital, sits between them along the Kennebec River, while Bath, a historic shipbuilding town, continued a maritime tradition stretching back generations. The included population tables give a precise statistical snapshot of where Maine's residents were concentrated at the decade's end. The map's population tables offer a precise statistical snapshot of where Maine's residents had settled by the close of the 1850s.

This 1859 sheet is one of three Maine maps in this collection, and where the 1845 Morse and Breese cerographic edition also offered here shows the state through an entirely different engraving technique, this later Mitchell-Desilver print represents the final word of one of the century's longest-running American atlas series. This piece suits a Maine native, a Portland or Bangor family, or a collector of Mitchell atlas maps. It ships unframed and is available in multiple sizes.