Montana Map 1935 Pictorial Print - Butte, Helena, Missoula

Ruth Taylor White drew this pictorial map of Montana 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 61 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. Montana is shown here through its mountain geography and its mining and ranching economy, the 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.

The Rocky Mountains and Glacier National Park are both illustrated prominently, the park having been established just twenty-five years earlier in 1910. The Missouri and Yellowstone rivers are shown winding through the state, Montana's two principal waterways. Copper mining in Butte is illustrated directly, a nod to the industry that had built the state's largest city. Cattle ranching scenes and depictions of Native American life, including figures in traditional dress and teepees, round out the map's imagery of the state's Indigenous and frontier heritage. Together Glacier Park, the Butte copper mines, and the cattle ranches sketch a Montana defined by mountains, mining, and open range.

A Montana family with mining or ranching roots 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 Montana to a conventional antique survey. The store's other Montana editions include Cram's 1878, 1893, and 1883 printings and an 1874 sheet paired with Idaho, 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.