Vermont in 1869 - Burlington, Montpelier, Bennington

This map of Vermont was produced by Frederick W. Beers and published in 1869 by Beers, Ellis & Soule of Philadelphia, engraved by Worley & Bracher as part of an atlas project that included the detailed county survey work for which Beers's firm was known across southern Vermont. Beers's maps were built from actual surveys rather than compiled from older sources, and this sheet is finished in full color with relief indicated by hachures, reflecting the firm's reputation for accuracy over decorative flourish. It depicts Vermont four years after the Civil War's end, a rural New England state whose farms, towns, and emerging rail lines were being mapped in unprecedented detail to support land ownership records and local development.

Burlington is marked on Vermont's western edge along Lake Champlain, by this date the state's largest town and its principal center of trade with New York and Canada. Montpelier appears as the state capital, a smaller town chosen for its central location rather than its size. Bennington is recorded in the state's southwestern corner, one of the counties Beers surveyed in the greatest detail and a town already known for its Revolutionary War history. Vermont's borders with Canada, New York, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire are all traced on the sheet, situating the state within the wider region of the U.S. Northeast. Together these places show a state whose modest size belied the density of towns and boundaries packed onto a single map.

This map makes a fitting gift for anyone with family roots in Burlington, Bennington or the wider Green Mountain State, or for a collector interested in the accuracy of Beers's survey-based county atlas work. Its combination of hachured relief and vivid county coloring gives it a decorative quality that sets it apart from the plainer state maps common in earlier American atlases. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.