Puget Sound Nautical Chart, 1889

The story of this map

Puget Sound is a drowned mountain landscape — deep, cold, and branching into inlet after inlet — and the US Coast Survey’s chart no. 662 captures that shape on one tall sheet. First issued in 1878, this Library of Congress copy is the printing corrected to November 1889, and the title still reads “Washington Territory”: statehood came only days later, in the same month.

It is one of the prettier charts in our collection because it is hand coloured. A wash follows the shoreline, so the fjord-like arms of the Sound stand out against the cream paper, and the soundings run down the channels in neat engraved figures. Seattle’s Elliott Bay and the approach through Admiralty Inlet are there, along with the islands and passages that still confuse first-time boaters today.

The Coast Survey reached the Pacific Northwest late, and charts like this one were part of turning a remote territory into a working coast with steamer routes and timber ports.

It hangs well in a Seattle or Tacoma home, a cabin on the water, or a study in the Pacific Northwest style of wood and green. Part of our Framed Nautical Charts collection, and a good companion to our 1891 bird’s-eye view of Seattle. Printed to order on archival matte paper and framed in the country of delivery.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration plan: the Library of Congress copy is laminated, mounted on cloth and has a mended tear in the lower-left corner — reduce the lamination sheen and cloth texture where they show in the scan, digitally close the mended tear along its line without redrawing content; then crop scan margins, balance colour cast and levels while keeping the paper tone and the hand colouring, remove library stamps and scanner artefacts if present, gentle sharpening. No repainting of original content.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.