Oregon Map 1878 Railroad Print - Portland, Salem, Eugene

George Franklin Cram, working from his Western Map Depot in Chicago, published this Rail Road and Township Map of Oregon in 1878 as part of his Standard American Atlas of the United States, a large-folio, hand-colored atlas designed as a business traveler's reference to the nation's rail network. This sheet is drawn from the atlas's rare original engraved plates and colored by county, part of the same early printing later replaced by Cram's smaller, mass-produced reprints of the 1880s. Oregon is shown here nearly two decades after statehood, its settled population still concentrated almost entirely in the Willamette Valley even as the newly extended Oregon and California Railroad was beginning to draw farmers, timber operators, and merchants further south along the valley floor.

Salem anchors the map as the state capital, a valley town chosen for its central position between Portland and the settlements further south. Portland dominates the north as Oregon's commercial hub, its position on the Columbia and Willamette rivers making it the state's principal port for wheat and timber shipped to San Francisco and beyond. Eugene marks the valley's southern edge, a smaller but growing town tied increasingly to the new rail line. The timbered Coast Range walls off the valley from the Pacific to the west, while the Columbia River forms Oregon's entire northern boundary, and between the two the state's settlement remained almost wholly confined to the valley floor.

This sheet documents the Willamette Valley just as the rail line began reshaping it, a detail that will matter both to an Oregon family with valley roots and to a collector building out the state's railroad-era maps. The store's other Oregon editions include the 1893 and 1883 Cram issues, an 1874 Asher & Adams sheet from before this southern extension existed, and an 1884 edition pairing Oregon with Washington; this 1878 map is the one that shows the Oregon and California line still actively under construction. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.