Wyoming in 1879 - Cheyenne, Laramie, Rocky Mountains

This map of Wyoming was published in 1879 by Rand McNally & Co. of Chicago for the fourth edition of the firm's Business Atlas, the company's first general atlas of the United States, originally covering only the Pacific slope states in 1876-77 before growing into this fuller national edition. The territory is shown with counties outlined in color, relief rendered by hachures and spot heights, and named railroads traced across the map, a level of commercial detail aimed at the shippers and businessmen who made up much of the atlas's readership. In 1879 Wyoming remained a sparsely settled territory, its towns strung almost entirely along the Union Pacific line, eleven years before statehood would finally arrive in 1890.

The Rocky Mountains dominate the western reaches of the map, the great range that shaped nearly every settlement pattern in the territory. The Laramie Plains, a broad, high grassland in the south-central territory, appear as the range's counterpoint, open country that supported the ranching economy growing up alongside the railroad. Cheyenne, the territorial capital, sat at the eastern edge of this plains country, its position on the Union Pacific line making it the territory's principal commercial and administrative center. Laramie itself, further west along the same rail corridor, had grown into one of the territory's more established towns, its name lending itself to the surrounding plains the map also records.

This map makes a fitting gift for anyone with ties to Cheyenne, Laramie, or the wider Rocky Mountain West, or for a collector interested in Rand McNally's earliest national business atlases. Wyoming buyers should note we also carry the territory as mapped three years earlier by George F. Cram in his Unrivaled Family Atlas, a hand-colored edition with Yellowstone National Park prominently shown: this 1879 Rand McNally sheet instead favors Cheyenne, Laramie, and the open plains country of the territory's rail corridor. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece.