This Collection features 17th, 18th and 19th-century maps that illustrate the power of illustration when it takes the form of maps. Our Perfect Recreations™ capture every detail of these cartographic treasures.

Coronelli's 1688 America Settentrionale (North America) is a lavishly detailed two-part map that was the definitive picture of North America at the time of its publication. Coronelli's complete access to the most up-to-date geographic information brought back by both French and Spanish explorers produced a picture of a continent dominated by France east of the Mississippi and by Spain to its west.

Three decades later, Guillaume Delisle's Carte de la Louisiane et du Cours du Mississipi presented the first accurate picture of the Mississippi and Missouri river valleys and illustrated an expansive New France completely surrounding a diminutive group of English colonies hugging the mid-Atlantic coastline. The French strategy of controlling the North American waterways -- from the St. Lawrence to the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico -- was crystallized in this map prepared for King Louis XV.

One French & Indian War and one American Revolution later, the westward expansion of an English-speaking United States was powerfully depicted in S. A. Mitchell's 1846 New Map of Texas, Oregon and California, one of the most important maps of the American West at mid-19th century. Published on the eve of the Mexican War, this map prematurely represented Texas as a state, with boundaries extending north and west as far as Santa Fe in what is now New Mexico.

By 1844, the American Josiah Gregg had spent eight years traversing the Santa Fe Trail and living in the Spanish territory of New Mexico. His Map of the Indian Territory details the development of wagon routes and the U.S. Army's expeditions and encounters with dozens of Indian tribes that set the stage for the great westward migrations of the second half of the century.

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