Manitoba Map 1925 Regional Print - Winnipeg, Brandon, Lake Winnipeg

The George F. Cram Company, established in Chicago in 1867 and still operating under that name in 1925, published this map of Manitoba on page 85 of that year's edition of Cram's Unrivaled Atlas of the World, a comprehensive volume of 182 maps bound in green linen boards with a gilt title. The atlas was notable for its updated international political boundaries reflecting the geographical changes brought about by the First World War, alongside a chronological pictorial history of the war itself illustrated with large-scale color maps and original photographs. This Manitoba map reflects the firm's standard commercial cartographic style of the period: precise, functional and clearly indexed rather than illustrated in the playful manner of the government's contemporary Animated Atlas, which covered the same province just four years later in 1929. An alphanumerical grid bordering the map ties directly to a place-name index on page 200 of the same atlas volume.

The map shows Manitoba's political boundaries, cities, roads, bodies of water, drainage, coastlines and islands, with latitudinal and longitudinal lines and a bar scale in miles giving it a precise geographical grounding typical of Cram's commercial atlas standard. Hudson Bay looms large to the northeast, a defining geographic and climatic influence on the entire province, while Lake Winnipeg, Lake Manitoba and Lake Winnipegosis are all marked as the crucial water bodies shaping Manitoba's ecosystem and economy. Winnipeg, the provincial capital, is prominently marked toward the southern part of the province, reflecting its established importance as an urban and rail center by the mid-1920s. Brandon, Manitoba's second-largest city and a key agricultural and rail hub to the west of Winnipeg, rounds out the map's coverage of the province's most significant population centers.

For a Manitoba family with roots in Winnipeg or Brandon, or for a collector interested in standard commercial atlas cartography from the years just after the First World War, this map is a natural pick. We also carry the Canadian government's 1929 Animated Atlas map of Manitoba; where that later map takes a deliberately illustrated, humorous approach to the province, this 1925 Cram map offers the more conventional political and geographic detail typical of an American commercial atlas. It's available unframed, in the full range of sizes from a compact print through to a large-format piece for a bigger wall.