Montana in 1893 - Helena, Billings, Missoula

In 1893, Wood Brothers Cash Store of Unadilla, New York handed this map to customers as a promotional keepsake bound into The Columbian World's Fair Atlas, a volume Chicago cartographer George F. Cram produced to mark that year's World's Fair and the 400th anniversary of Columbus's landing.

This Montana map runs at a scale of 1:3,000,000, with county boundaries in hand-applied red outline color and terrain rendered through hachure shading. The Rocky Mountains are a defining feature of the sheet, along with the northern edge of Yellowstone National Park and the Crow Indian Reservation. Butte, already known as the richest copper-mining hill on earth by 1893, anchors the map's southwest, its mines feeding the electrical wiring boom then transforming American cities, while open range still covered much of the map's eastern plains, cattle country not yet fenced by the barbed wire that would soon end the era. Both Greenwich and Washington appear as prime meridians along the map's borders.

A print like this suits anyone with Montana roots, a Big Sky Country transplant who wants a piece of home, or a collector building out Cram's 1893 series one state at a time. It ships unframed and comes in multiple sizes, making it a natural pick for a housewarming, birthday, or anniversary gift.