This is NOT a Bootlegger's Map of the United States

Only known example of this “bootleg” example of McCandlish’s iconic Bootlegger’s Map of the United States. A close copy in all respects, except for the imprint added below the bowdlerized title, and two new icons for the “Legend”: “Honest Prohibition Agents” and “Dry Centers over population of 1”. Not surprisingly, neither of these actually appear in the map!

The earliest version of McCandlish’s map appeared in the Washington Post, when he was a staff cartoonist and children’s columnist for the paper from the early 1920s. By 1926, McCandlish had taken as similar position at the Detroit Free Press. Once there, the map was published as a broadsheet, in the format that it is now best known, at the Griswold Press in Detroit. The press advertised the map for sale on commission from 1929, but McCandlish only applied for copyright in March of 1930, leaving the door for illicit copying, as here, and syndication, wide open. Examples with the imprints of the United Map Corp of Buffalo, NY; Termagico of New York; are the Val Blatz Brewing Co., of Milwaukee are also known. The map was also presented as evidence in court, during the trial of Charles L. Bowers, who was charged with violating prohibition in Ohio in 1932.

 A later, colour-printed edition of the map was printed in 1944, as Bill Whiffletree’s Bootlegger’s Map of the United States.