1889 Rand McNally Map of the Pacific Coast from San Diego to Chilkat, Alaska

This is a scarce 1889 Rand McNally map of the Pacific Coast of North America, produced to show and promote the routes of the Pacific Coast Steamship Company just a few years prior to the Klondike gold rush. The scope of the map extends from the Mexican border in the south to British Columbia and Vancouver Island in the North. An inset map detials from that point to 'Mousouah' Lake in Alaska, (presumably Mosquito Lake).

A Tourist Brochure

The target audience for this map were primarily tourists: the verso text pitches a month-long sightseeing journey to Alaska from San Francisco in glowing terms, and the illustrations on the map's covers and cartouche highlight the dramatic vistas. The map's cartouche offers a vignette of the Thousand Islands as viewed from Sitka, while the front cover presents a view of the steamship Idaho navigating Glacier Bay. (For those desiring a warmer journey, the brochure does not neglect the company's southern routes: the back cover shows a fashionable woman and her daughters perambulating Santa Barbara's palm tree orchard.)

Rich in Data

Beyond the map itself, which marks out both express and local routes north and south from San Francisco, the map also displays tables indicating distances between important destinations; the verso contains tables of ticket prices, schedules, and ticket agents. The verso text also includes detailed descriptions of featured destinations.

The Pacific Coast Steamship Company

At the time this brochure was published, the company was running two steamboats up the coast to Alaska. One of these, the Ancon, would have its career cut short later the same year when it ran aground and broke in Loring, Alaska (happily, without casualty). Since we see editions of this map produced as late as 1911, it must be presumed that this disaster did not ruin the company, and that the tourist trade (and the subsequent Yukon Gold Rush) was able to keep them busy. We are left to speculate what other cargos the Steamship Company carried: the ship depicted in the Glacier Bay vignette, the Idaho, had been caught smuggling opium in the early 1880s.

Publication History and Census

OCLC lists thirteen examples of this map, in seven editions ranging between 1886 and 1911. Only two examples of the 1889 were located, one at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park and the other at the Wisconsin Historical Society Library.