Chicago.

Detailed plan of Chicago issued just a few years before the Great Fire of 1871.

Samuel Augustus Mitchell was one of the most popular and prolific American cartographers of the 19th century. Originally a schoolteacher, Mitchell was disappointed in the quality of regularly available educational material and sought out to remedy the situation by creating accurate, reasonably priced maps, atlases, and geographic textbooks.

This map of Chicago was published in one of his atlases from 1867, and it shows a wealth of interesting detail from the Windy City just a few years before much of it would be engulfed by flames. Transportation routes are noted and include railroads, streetcar lines, and horse-drawn trolleys.

Important public buildings, schools, riverside canals, and major depots are outlined and individually labeled. Attractive hand color divides the city into its various wards, bounded by Western Avenue, Fullerton Avenue, Thirty-First Street, and Lake Michigan.