Texas in 1865 - Austin, El Paso, Corpus Christi

Samuel Augustus Mitchell Jr. of Philadelphia issued this map of Texas in 1865 as plate XIII in his New Reference Atlas, drawn from the latest government surveys and boundary adjustments available in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. This example is notable for its large panhandle inset in the upper left, a rare level of dedicated attention to the Texas Panhandle at a time when the region was still organized only as the sprawling, sparsely populated Young Territory. The main map extends south and west from there across the full sweep of postwar Texas, reflecting both the state's recent political reintegration into the Union and a still-developing western frontier defended by a scattered line of army forts.

Austin, the state capital on the Colorado River, anchors the map's interior amid the postwar road network linking it to the rest of the state. El Paso, isolated far to the west on the Rio Grande, sits at the edge of the map's least organized territory, connected to the interior only by the thinnest thread of mail roads and forts. Corpus Christi, on the Gulf coast south of Galveston, anchors the map's southern shoreline, its bay recorded alongside the string of coastal features running down toward the Rio Grande delta. Fort Mason, Fort Clark, and Camp Lancaster mark the western defensive line, while the northern panhandle inset captures a vast, still-unorganized expanse north of the main settled counties.

This map suits a Texas family, an Austin or El Paso transplant, or a Civil War-era history collector. This is a second example of Mitchell Jr.'s 1865 Texas plate XIII from the store's inventory, offered alongside the store's other copy of the same edition; both share the same map content but are independent physical prints, so a collector building a set or wanting a spare copy can acquire either. It is available unframed in a range of sizes.