This not formally titled illustrated map of the U.S. with southern Canada and northern Mexico appears as a centerfold in the 64-page Glimpse of Tribune Tower, 1933-1854 (1944 printing shown here), pp. 32-33, and is signed "Zamudio" in the bottom left center of the illustration (in the Pacific coast of Mexico part of the map).  This small 64-page souvenir book for Tribune Tower visitors first appeared in 1933, undoubtedly for attendees in town for the Cenutry of Progress Exposition a few miles south on the lakefront, with regular reprintings through 1954, according to Worldcat records. 

This centerfold graphic apparently is the creation of Alex Zamudio (1899?-Jan. 1986 [Trib. obit, Jan. 31, 1986]), a far northwest side of Chicago resident (7451 N. Maplewood Ave., Trib. Mar. 11, 1945, N2). According to the obituary, Zamudio worked as an artist for the Chicago Tribune's advertising department, 1927-1965, until retirement, mostly working on advertisements but also on "special projects," such as this handsomely illustrated map. A 1945 Tribune story refered to Zamudio as working for the art department. After his retirement Zamudio returned to work on Festival of Homes editions "for several years," according to the 1986 obituary. Zamudio was survived in 1986 by a son Humberto and two daughters, Laverne Nichols and Beatrice Walz, of the duaghters living across the street from his homewhen he died. Zamudio was given a watch for thirty years of service at a ceremony in December 1957 by J. Howard Wood, general manager of the paper and vice president of the company; Wood was a 1922 graduate of Lake Forest College (Trib. Dec. 17, 1957, 5).    

The Chicago-based career Tribune staff illustrator Alex Zamudio (1899?-1986) appears to be a heretofore unherladed (on the internet) Hispanic American artist, and one with talents comparable to those of contemporary, well-known Tribune artists John T. McCutcheon, Carey Orr and others. Works by McCutcheon and Orr are represented by original cartoon illustrations and published works elsewhere in Lake Forest College's Archives and Special Collections.   

This graphically illustrated map of Tribune Company operations was created in the general period of the zenith of the firm's media influence in the western Great Lakes region, with also its New York Daily News on the east coast, and a west coast office in San Francisco.  Its dedicated timber resources for newsprint in Canada also are shown and the ships and trains that conveyed the paper to Chicago. 

The years between 1933 when this illustration first appeared and this 1944 reprinting in the Tribune Tower souvenir booklet, at the height of the U.S. offensives in World War II, were the peak of the era of Chicago Tribune media hegemony.  The Tribune's triumphirate of powerful cousins--publisher Col. Robert R. McCormick (d. 1955), Joseph Medill Patterson (Daily News; d. 1946), and Cissy Patterson (Washington Times-Herald; d. 1948) formed the not so loyal opposition to F. D. Roosevelt's international policies. When drawn in 1933, Zamudia's double-page map delineated not only the operations but also national ambitions of the Tribune Company and its leaders. Elsewhere in Glimpses of Tribune Tower the Chicago-based journal is referedto as "The world's greatest newspaper," a phrase that appeared also on the front-page masthead of the paper through col. mcCormick's lieftime, through the mid 1950s.      

"Tribune Town" is outlined by Zamudio, the newspaper's ciculation district in 1933-1954.  This included the northern two thirds of Illinois, the northwestern half of Indiana, southwestern Michigan and the western three quarters of upper Michigan, most of Wisconsin except for that south of Lake Superior, and the northeasern half of Iowa. 

Illustrative devices include two anthropomorphic clouds over eastern and western Canada that blow breezes, as first appeared in the 1493 Ptolmaic map in the Nuremberg Chronicle, and attributed to Albrect Durer.  Also included are conventional images of a whale, a dolphin and Neptune, the sea god. Less conventional are depictions of the Tribune Tower, Chicago, the News buidling in New York and a building for the Tribune office in San Francisco.  ships identified by name are shown and a train in Ontario east of Lake Huron.  Men are shown sawing down a tree in a patch of forest in northeastern Canada near the St. Lawrence estuary at Shelter Bay.  There is a compass over Idaho, Montana and Wyoming and a scale in miles up to 500 in the lower right hand corner.