Pennsylvania in 1883 - Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg

This Pennsylvania map comes 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., a first edition remembered as Cram's first "mass production" world atlas. The sixty-five-map volume was designed to bring detailed state geography to a wide American audience during a period of fast industrial growth.

Pennsylvania is printed here in full and outline color at a scale of about 1:1,287,475, with red marking the state's border and green outlining its counties, relief indicated through hachures. The sheet names Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Harrisburg among the state's major cities, and details the extensive network of roads and railways that supported Pennsylvania's coal, steel, and rail industries in the 1880s. Andrew Carnegie's steel mills around Pittsburgh were in the middle of rapid expansion by 1883, feeding the same rail network shown on this sheet and setting the city on a path to becoming the country's steelmaking capital within a generation. Both Greenwich and Washington prime meridians are marked on the map.

This print suits anyone with Pennsylvania roots, a family that worked the mills or rail lines shown here, a transplant who left the Keystone State, or a collector building a run of Cram's 1883 atlas maps. It also makes a fitting housewarming, birthday, or anniversary gift. Every print ships unframed and is available in multiple sizes.