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America’s First Board Game Was an Idealized ‘Travellers’ Tour’ Through a Young Nation The 1822 board game, the first to feature a map of the United States, was forgotten for nearly a century, by Matthew Wynn Sivils July 29, 2024 https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/americas-first-board-game-travellers-tour "...Produced by the New York cartography firm of F. & R. Lockwood, “The Travellers’ Tour Through the United States” was an imitation of earlier European geography games... Geography games generally used a map for a board, and the rules involved players reciting geographic facts... “The Travellers’ Tour” first appeared in 1822, making it the earliest known board game printed in the U.S. But for almost a century another game held that honor. In 1894, the game manufacturer Parker Brothers acquired the rights to “The Mansion of Happiness,” an English game first produced in the U.S. in 1843. In its promotional materials, the company declared it “The first board game ever published in America.”