Travellers' Tour Through the United States

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Travellers' Tour Through the United States
The traveller's tour through the United States. LOC 2017585497.jpg
The game board and instructions
PublishersF. & R. Lockwood
Publication1822;202 years ago (1822)
GenresGeography, educational
Players2–4

Travellers' Tour Through the United States is a geographical board game published in 1822, thought to be the first board game produced in the United States. [1] [2] [3]

The educational game was published by F. & R. Lockwood, New York-based cartographers. [1] [2] [4] The game consisted of a map, which players would traverse via 139 municipalities that they had to correctly identify to move forward, determining how far they could move with a teetotum. [1] [3] In an advanced version of the game, players were also required to name the populations of the cities and towns they landed on, and the game also offered trivia about each locality. [3] [5] The winner was the first player to reach New Orleans. [1]

Travellers' Tour was also the first board game based on a map of the United States. [1] [4] At the time, the nation's westernmost states were Louisiana and Missouri, the latter of which had only gained statehood a year prior to the game's publication. [1] [5]

The Mansion of Happiness (1843) was previously thought to be the oldest American board game, before Travellers' Tour was discovered in the American Antiquarian Society's archives in 1991. [1] Mansion of Happiness was also based on a previously extant British game, while Travellers' Tour was a wholly American creation. [5]

A sister game, Travellers' Tour Through Europe, was released a few months after. [2] [6] This was later followed by Travellers' Tour Round the World. [7]

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Sivils, Matthew Wynn (2024-05-08). "What America's first board game can teach us about the aspirations of a young nation". The Conversation. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  2. 1 2 3 "Antiques: When games were played with dice and boards". The Desert Sun. 2024-01-28. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  3. 1 2 3 Guerra, Douglas A. (2018-08-14). Slantwise Moves: Games, Literature, and Social Invention in Nineteenth-Century America. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN   978-0-912295-48-0.
  4. 1 2 "The traveller's tour through the United States". Library of Congress. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  5. 1 2 3 "Travellers' Tour Through the United States". BoardGameGeek. Retrieved 2024-05-10.
  6. Seville, Adrian; Depaulis, Thierry; Bekkering, Geert H. (2023-07-31). Playing with Maps: Cartographic Games in Western Culture. BRILL. ISBN   978-90-04-68114-9.
  7. Nissenbaum, Stephen (2010-12-01). The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural History of America's Most Cherished Holiday. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN   978-0-307-76022-7.