North Carolina in 1883 - Raleigh, Charlotte, Wilmington

This is the New Rail Road and County Map of North Carolina, a map from Cram's Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World, copyrighted 1883 by George Franklin Cram and published in Chicago by A.C. Shewey and Co. It's part of the first edition of Cram's first "mass production" world atlas, sixty-five maps produced to bring detailed geography within reach of ordinary American households.

The sheet is printed in full or outline color, relief shown through hachures, at a scale of about 1:2,220,000. County lines are marked in red throughout North Carolina, and the map's title sits inside an oval cartouche, a decorative flourish typical of the period. As with other maps in this railroad series, the state's rail network is a central feature, reflecting how central the railroads had become to trade and travel in the postwar South. In the Piedmont counties shown here, the state's tobacco farms were only just beginning to feed the first cigarette factories opening in towns like Durham, a business barely a few years old in 1883 that would eventually reshape the state's economy.

This print suits anyone with North Carolina roots, a family that worked the rail lines shown here, a transplant who left the state, or a collector building a run of Cram's 1883 atlas maps. It also makes a fitting housewarming, birthday, or anniversary gift for a North Carolinian. Every print ships unframed and comes in multiple sizes.