The Kansas Pocket Map, the Cartographer's Orphan

the rediscovery of the New World in 1492, the masters of Old-World cartography were furnished with a new and exciting continent for charting and mapping. There is little doubt of the influence and impact which such eminent map-makers as Gerardus Mercator, Abraham Ortelius, and Willem Janszoon Blaeu had on the development of cartography, but it would be another two hundred years before the Americas would produce their own recognized cartographers. Eventually the United States could boast such noted map-makers and publishers as Matthew Carey, Joseph H. Colton and family, Samuel Mitchell, George A. Ogle,1 and A. J. Johnson, and by the latter half of the nineteenth century, Rand McNally had become a household name as one of the country's largest producers of maps. The American cartographers themselves had a vast new field as the country expanded westward and dreams of an "Empire on the Pacific" developed in the American mind. The exploration of the western frontier by such able men as William Clark, Meriwether Lewis, Zebulon Pike, Stephen Long, and Jedediah Smith allowed the cartographer a wide latitude for his ability and imagination in creating, some of the most important and sought-after maps produced during the early developmental stages of the United States. The large and cumbersome atlases of an earlier age gave way to small pocket folding maps, responding to the need of the settler and the land speculator for the latest information concerning the new states and territories in compact form. The variety of pocket maps with and without text increased, as did the number of manufacturers. As examples, there were three different travelers' guidebooks through the United States, each