Tennessee Map 1935 Pictorial Print - Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville

Ruth Taylor White drew this pictorial map of Tennessee 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 97 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. Tennessee is shown here through its geography, farming, and musical culture, the identities that most shaped the state's popular image 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.

Cities and regions across the state are labeled with illustrations tied to local activity, farming scenes dominating much of the countryside between them. Music appears as a recurring theme across the map, an early nod to the musical traditions the state would become still more closely associated with in later decades. Agricultural products are illustrated throughout the central and western counties, reflecting Tennessee's continued reliance on farming through the Depression era. Together the labeled towns, the farm scenes, and the musical imagery sketch a Tennessee defined by rural life and its deep musical roots.

A Tennessee family with farming roots, or simply a love of the state's musical heritage, will find this map speaks to that directly, and it makes a distinctive gift for anyone who prefers a whimsical, Depression-era view of Tennessee to a conventional antique survey. The store's other Kentucky and Tennessee editions include Morse's 1845 combined sheet and Cram's later 19th-century printings, all standard survey-style cartography; this 1935 Little, Brown sheet is the only pictorial, cartoon-style map of Tennessee the collection carries. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.