1856 Sketch of the Public Surveys in the State of Wisconsin
DESCRIPTION
This detailed government survey map captures Wisconsin and neighboring Minnesota Territory during a period of rapid settlement and development in the Upper Midwest. Issued by the Surveyor General's Office in 1856 under Warner Lewis, the map records the progress of the federal public land surveys across Wisconsin and the eastern portion of Minnesota Territory. The township grid covers most of Wisconsin but becomes increasingly incomplete farther north and west, providing a visual record of the gradual extension of the federal land system into the region.
Surveying Wisconsin for Settlement
The rectangular grid represents the township and range system used by the federal government to survey and organize public lands before their sale and settlement. Rivers, lakes, state boundaries and major geographic features are shown alongside the survey network, while letters within individual townships indicate the status of the surveying work. Wisconsin had become a state only eight years earlier, and the map documents the continuing process of measuring and organizing its more remote northern lands even as the southern part of the state was already experiencing substantial settlement and development.
The map also records an older landscape that was rapidly changing. Native American reservations and lands remain prominently identified, while treaty boundaries and cessions document the transfer of enormous areas into federal control. Similar contemporary survey maps specifically identify Oneida, Menominee, Stockbridge, Brothertown and Winnebago lands in Wisconsin and Minnesota. The eastern portion of Minnesota Territory is also shown several years before Minnesota achieved statehood in 1858. Viewed together, the survey grid, Native lands, waterways and sparsely settled northern regions provide a revealing picture of the Upper Midwest as federal surveying and American settlement expanded across the region.
CONDITION
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