Map of the Portland and Ogdensburg Rail Road Line and Connections.

New York: Hatch & Co., 34 Vesey St., [ca. 1872]. Hand-colored lithograph, 19” x 26”, plus margins, mounted on renewed linen with green silk selvage, attached to original wooden rods.

A scarce and appealing map of the partially-constructed Portland & Ogdensburg Railroad, being a hopeful projection of a railroad that was not to be.

Chartered in 1867, the Portland & Ogdensburg as originally conceived was to run from Portland to Fabyan (a junction at Carroll, New Hampshire in the White Mountains), from which the Boston, Concord & Montreal R.R. would continue the line west to Ogdensburg, New York. While the project failed, in 1880 the Vermont section was reorganized and leased by the Boston & Lowell R.R.; and in 1886 the Maine and New Hampshire section was reorganized as the Portland & Ogdensburg Railway.

This map spans from Lake Ontario in the west to Portland, Maine in the east, and extends from Montreal as far south as Boston and central Massachusetts. Shown here are mountains, (including the Adirondacks and White Mountains), bodies of water, and roads, as well as the P&O and other rail lines. The progress of track construction is shown in red; at this time (ca. 1870) the line was more than half complete. Several dozen stops on the line are named on the completed section. On Lake Champlain, a line spans from Burlington, VT to the Rensselaer & Saratoga R.R. in New York. A reference table in the upper-left provides a key to thirty-six townships in Vermont. Numerous towns and cities are identified, including Portland, Ogdensburg, Watertown, Troy, Albany, Concord, Manchester, Portsmouth, and Lowell.

The Hatch Lithographic Co. of New York was founded in 1855 by George Hatch Jr., whose father George W. Hatch was an engraver and founder of the American Banknote Company. Operating for three decades before going out of business in 1889, the company specialized in chromolithographic prints, certificates, trade cards, and labels, many for tobacco.

OCLC records four copies.

REFERENCES: Heald, Bruce D. A History of the Boston & Maine Railroad (Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press, 2007); Last, Jay. The Color Explosion: Nineteenth-Century American Lithography (Santa Ana, CA, 2005), p. 98.

CONDITION: Good, a few light dampstains,one small brown stain at center-top, some creasing and crackling in the margins.