Zoomable Fort Wayne Guide Map of 1871 (location of First Professional Baseball Game in the Ninth Ward) at the Barry Lawrence Ruderman Antique Maps Inc. RareMaps.com. It provides an extensive history of the map in reference to the Kekionga Ball Grounds by Bill Griggs at the SABR Society for American Baseball Research, where on May 4, 1871, the first-ever National Association game was played—considered by many historians to be the inaugural Major League Baseball game.
The earliest recorded printed map to locate the site of the world’s first professional baseball game!
Fort Wayne Guide Map.
Cartographer(s): Harvey C. Lowrie
Date: 1871 Place: Chicago
Dimensions: 21.25 x 18 inches
Condition Rating: VG
With an extremely rare depiction of the Kekionga Ball Grounds — the birthplace of professional baseball in America. Harvey C. Lowrie’s Fort Wayne Guide Map of 1871 offers a comprehensive and detailed representation of Fort Wayne, Indiana, at a critical juncture in its history. Created during a period of rapid urbanization and industrial growth, the map captures the intricate layout of the city, showcasing not only its streets and neighborhoods but also key civic institutions, transportation routes, and significant landmarks. Most importantly, this map has a unique place in sports history. It is one of the few surviving documents to pinpoint the location of the Kekionga Ball Grounds, immortalizing the site of the first professional baseball league game, the same year this map was published. No photographs or sketches of the ballpark have survived, and this map is the only known printed document that clearly references the ballpark’s boundaries, giving it a special place in the study of early baseball history. The boundaries of the grounds, located on the west side of the map on the north side of the St. Mary’s River, bounded by Mechanics Street, west of the St. Marys River, are not well known, other than as shown on this map. The area may have included additional property leased by the team, though no surviving documentation clarifies whether specific lots were part of the legal description.
1871 #antique #map of Fort Wayne, IN, with an extremely rare depiction of the Kekionga Ball Grounds — the birthplace of professional #baseball in America. [ Image shown on Twitter is not the link which goes to this colored 1871 map? ]
Page 474, A tract of ground north of Camp Allen, in Nebraska, between the canal and West Main street, was converted into a baseball park for the lively contests which occurred in 1870 and succeeding years. The citizens raised a fund to erect a grandstand, the ornamental central section of which was christened "The Grand Duchess." A monument marking the location of the first professional baseball league game between the Fort Wayne Kekiongas and the Cleveland Forest Citys on May 4, 1871 in Camp Allen Park in Fort Wayne was erected in May 2017. Fort Wayne won 2-0.
Baseball’s first professional league game, 150 years ago posted Jul 6, 2022 This story originally aired: May. 4, 2021 FORT WAYNE, Ind. (WPTA) - by Daniel Beals on YouTube. May 4 is a special day in baseball, especially here in 21Country. A monument marks a historic site at Camp Allen Park, alongside the St. Marys River.
“You could argue that Fort Wayne was part of the first professional sports league in America, which is kind of cool,” sports historian Blake Sebring told us.
Sebring has literally written the book on sports history in Fort Wayne. “The Kekiongas were a club team in Fort Wayne,” he said, “they had a little bit of a reputation in the midwest as being a good team.” In 1871, they were invited to join the National Association of Professional Baseball Players. A city in Ohio was slated to make history that day. But Mother Nature had other plans.
