Cairo, Illinois, 1867 – Antique Map Print
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
This rare antique map captures Cairo, Illinois, 1867 in remarkable detail. The original is held by the Library of Congress, so what you hang is a true record of its time.
Library of Congress record: Cairo, Il[linois] 1867
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Cairo, Illinois, 1867
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Cairo, Illinois, sat on a point of land where the Ohio River joins the Mississippi, and by 1867 that position had made it one of the busiest river and rail towns in the Midwest. The Illinois Central Railroad ran its line south to the town from Chicago, so grain, lumber, and goods moved between the river steamers and the trains along its levee. The Civil War had turned Cairo into a major Union supply depot, and many of the warehouses, wharves, and boarding houses on the map were built or expanded to serve that trade. The town's growth had been fast and uneven, and residents in 1867 were still living with the swings of a boom that had stalled after the war, with rivers that flooded often, and with a population that included both longtime Southern-border families and newcomers from the North and abroad.
| Created / published | 1867 |
|---|---|
| Creator | ruger, a., chicago lithographing co |
| Notes | An original bird's-eye view map of Cairo, Illinois, drawn in 1867. Bird's-eye view maps were drawn by travelling artists who walked a town street by street, sketching every building from an imagined vantage point in the air, then sold the finished lithograph door to door by subscription. Roughly five thousand American towns were recorded this way between the 1860s and the 1920s, and for many of them the panoramic map is the most complete picture of the place that survives. Reproduced from the original in the Library of Congress collections. Printed to order on archival paper. Free shipping on all US orders. |
| Subjects | Panoramic maps--Illinois |
| Source | Library of Congress, Panoramic Maps |
| Original scan | 8,752 × 6,592 px · prints to 29 × 22 in at 300 dpi |
| Library of Congress title | Cairo, Il[linois] 1867 |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-OYK-488559 |
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