Bessemer, Michigan, 1886 – Vintage Map Wall Art
(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
Step back in time with Bessemer, Michigan, 1886, an antique map rich in period detail. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
Library of Congress record: Bird's eye view of Bessemer, Mich., Ontonagon County 1886
Framed, it is ready for the wall; unframed, it is ready for the frame you choose. It brings character to any room and makes a memorable gift. Free shipping in the lower 48 states. Snapshots of the Past, founded in 2001, has served tens of thousands of customers worldwide.
Bessemer, Michigan, 1886
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Bessemer, Michigan, in 1886 was a young iron-mining town in the Gogebic Range of the western Upper Peninsula, where the discovery of rich ore in the early 1880s had brought a rush of prospectors, miners, and merchants. The town took its name from the Bessemer steel process, which made cheap steel from iron ore, and its fortunes rose and fell with the mines that surrounded it. Ore was hauled by rail toward Lake Superior docks, and the railroads that served the district tied its growth to Chicago and Milwaukee markets. Miners arrived from Cornwall, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Germany, and their churches, saloons, and boarding houses gave the new streets their character. This 1886 map records a community still taking shape, with its lots and buildings laid out only a few years after the first ore was shipped.
| Created / published | 1886 |
|---|---|
| Creator | norris, wellge & co |
| Notes | An original bird's-eye view map of Bessemer, Michigan, drawn in 1886. 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--Michigan |
| Source | Library of Congress, Panoramic Maps |
| Original scan | 6,496 × 4,160 px · prints to 22 × 14 in at 300 dpi |
| Library of Congress title | Bird's eye view of Bessemer, Mich., Ontonagon County 1886 |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-OYK-489186 |
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