Nevada & California Map 1870 Regional Print - Las Vegas, Reno, Sacramento

H.H. Lloyd's map of Nevada and California, published in Chicago by Warner & Higgins in 1870, is the rare first edition of what would become part of Lloyd's Atlas of the United States, a work never issued on its own but distributed only as a supplement within county atlases through the 1870s. Lithographed in Philadelphia by François Bourquin, the sheet appeared just one year after completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, and it captures both states at the height of the excitement that milestone generated, recording rail lines, mining settlements and evolving county boundaries with a currency few competing atlas maps of the same date could match.

Virginia City anchors Nevada's Comstock Lode mining district, the source of the silver wealth that had transformed the state's fortunes over the preceding decade, while Elko marks one of the boomtowns strung along the Central Pacific Railroad as it follows the Humboldt River across the state's northern reaches, with southern Nevada left largely marked "Unexplored." Sacramento anchors California as its capital and the western terminus of the transcontinental line. The map records California's short-lived Klamath County and the projected route of the Southern Pacific line, along with overland stage routes, outposts like Fort Ruby, bathymetric shading around the Channel Islands, and mining settlements running from Virginia City south to the Coso Diggings.

This map makes a compelling gift for a Nevada or California family with roots in the Comstock silver boom or the transcontinental railroad era, or for a collector seeking a genuinely rare first-edition Lloyd atlas supplement map. Its railroad-era snapshot of the two states, taken at the very moment their fortunes were being reshaped by the new transcontinental line, sets it apart from the store's other Nevada sheets by Rand McNally and Cram, both issued a full two decades later once the state's mining boom had matured. It is offered unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact print for a study to a large-format piece for an office or den.