Travellers' Tour Through the United States
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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]
Publishers | F. & R. Lockwood |
---|---|
Publication | 1822; 202 years ago (1822) |
Genres | Geography, educational |
Players | 2–4 |
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]