Michigan Map 1935 Pictorial Print - Detroit, Grand Rapids, Lansing

Ruth Taylor White drew this pictorial map of Michigan for Our U.S.A., A Gay Geography, a whimsical cartoon atlas published by Little, Brown, and Company in 1935 with text by Frank J. Taylor, covering all 48 states in fifty-eight full-color illustrated sheets. This sheet appears on page 53 of the atlas, printed in bright lithographed color and filled with small hand-drawn scenes rather than any conventional survey detail, a style built to entertain a Depression-era audience as much as inform it. Michigan is shown here through its automotive industry and its lakes and forests, the two identities that most defined the state's popular image in the 1930s. Ruth Taylor White and Frank Taylor built the atlas as a joint effort, her illustrations paired with his short, wry captions, and the finished sheets sold well enough during the Depression that Little, Brown kept the title in print for several years after its first release.

Detroit is illustrated with cars and factories, a direct nod to the city's status as the Motor City and the heart of American automobile manufacturing. Fishing, sailing, and winter sports scenes are scattered across the state's lakes and forests, reflecting Michigan's outdoor recreational reputation. Agricultural imagery, including crops and livestock, fills in the state's farming regions away from the industrial southeast. Together the Detroit auto imagery and the lake-and-forest recreation scenes sketch a Michigan defined by the pairing of heavy industry with natural, outdoor abundance. A scattering of smaller lakeside towns is worked into the northern half of the map as well, each tied to fishing, logging, or tourism rather than to Detroit's industrial economy.

Anyone with roots in Detroit's auto industry or Michigan's northern lake country will recognize this map's take on the state immediately, and it makes a distinctive gift for anyone who prefers a whimsical, Depression-era view of Michigan to a conventional antique survey. The store's other Michigan editions include Bradford's 1838 atlas, Morse's 1845 sheet, and several Cram and Mitchell printings, all standard survey-style cartography; this 1935 Little, Brown sheet is the only pictorial, cartoon-style map of the state the collection carries. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.