North Carolina Map 1935 Pictorial Print - High Point, Gastonia, Raleigh

Ruth Taylor White drew this pictorial map of North Carolina 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 75 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. North Carolina is shown here through its agriculture and its furniture and textile industries, the identities that most defined the state's economy 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.

Tobacco and cotton fields are illustrated prominently, the two crops that had anchored North Carolina's agricultural economy for generations. Furniture making in High Point is illustrated directly, a nod to the industry that had made the town a national manufacturing center. Textile production in Gastonia rounds out the map's industrial imagery, reflecting the state's broader shift toward manufacturing alongside its farming. Together the tobacco and cotton fields, the High Point furniture industry, and the Gastonia textile mills sketch a North Carolina balanced between its old agricultural economy and its growing industrial base.

Anyone with roots in North Carolina's tobacco counties, High Point, or Gastonia 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 North Carolina to a conventional antique survey. The store's other North Carolina editions include Morse's 1845 sheet and Cram's 1878 printing paired with South Carolina, both 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.