United States by Colton

Joseph Hutchins Colton (1800–1893) and the publishing house he founded rank among the most significant figures in the history of nineteenth-century American cartography. Established in New York in 1831, J.H. Colton & Company grew to become one of the leading map publishers in the English-speaking world, producing atlases, wall maps and individual state and regional maps that were distinguished by their accuracy, their clarity of engraving and their responsiveness to the rapidly changing geography of a country that was expanding westward at extraordinary speed. The maps produced by Colton and his successors are primary documents of American geographic knowledge at a moment of continuous and dramatic change.

The mid-nineteenth century was the great period of Colton’s output, and the maps produced in the 1850s and 1860s reflect the cartographic challenges of an era in which new territories were being surveyed, new states admitted to the Union and new communication routes — railways above all — transforming the human geography of the continent. Colton’s atlas maps of individual states, produced in large formats suitable for wall mounting as well as in atlas form, captured the state of geographic knowledge at specific moments with a thoroughness that makes them invaluable historical documents. The successive editions of his state maps, produced at intervals of a few years, allow the progressive settlement of the frontier to be tracked with considerable precision.

The quality of Colton’s engraving and printing was consistently high by the standards of the American map trade. Working with skilled engravers and taking advantage of the improved steel engraving techniques that were transforming the quality of American printed maps through the mid-century, Colton produced maps whose clarity and legibility set a standard that competitors found difficult to match. The hand-colouring applied to many Colton maps — distinguishing state boundaries, county lines and territorial divisions with careful washes of colour — adds both visual appeal and informational clarity to objects already distinguished by the quality of their engraving.

Colton’s national maps of the United States as a whole are among his most significant contributions to American cartography. Produced at a moment when the country’s boundaries were themselves contested — the question of western territories, the location of the Mexican border, the status of Oregon and other Pacific coast regions — these maps reflect the geographical understanding and political assumptions of specific historical moments with a directness that makes them primary sources of the first importance for historians of American expansion.

The Civil War period saw Colton’s maps put to immediate practical use as newspapers, military commanders and an anxious public sought cartographic tools for understanding the progress of campaigns across a theatre of war that stretched from Virginia to Texas. War maps produced by Colton and his contemporaries in the 1860s document both the geography of the conflict and the state of public knowledge about American territory at one of the most critical moments in the nation’s history.

For collectors of American cartography, Colton maps offer material of consistent quality, historical significance and relative accessibility. The large production runs of the major atlas editions mean that individual map sheets can still be found in good condition, while the finest examples — the largest format wall maps, the earliest editions of significant state maps — are increasingly scarce and correspondingly valued by serious collectors.