1884 Map of the United States Exhibiting the Grants of Lands Made by the General Government to Aid in the Construction of Railroads and Wagon Roads
DESCRIPTION
This striking Government map visualizes the scale of nineteenth century federal land grants to railroads and wagon roads. First compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey under the direction of John Wesley Powell and later reissued in Thomas Donaldson’s monumental study The Public Domain, it was designed to quantify just how much of the nation’s public land had been pledged to spur internal improvements by 1883. The map is accompanied by a disbound excerpt from Donaldson’s Public Domain.
Examining the Map
The sheet presents the United States on a large format base with bands of warm brown shading that sweep across the West and Midwest, tracing grant belts along projected and completed rail lines. Nearly the whole of Iowa is swathed in tone, and similarly dense ribbons wrap the Northern Pacific corridor, the transcontinental routes through the Rockies and the Sierra, and numerous feeders in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf states.
A boxed explanation at lower left tallies the acreage granted, the area still required to satisfy existing grants, and an estimated value of the lands involved, while the engraved topography, rivers, towns, and territorial boundaries provide geographic context for the staggering figures. The visual effect is intentionally dramatic, suggesting vast conveyances to private companies.
Historical Context of the Federal Land Grant Era
The map captures the country at the height of the federal land grant era. Congress had been deeding alternate sections of public land along railroad rights of way since the 1850s as a financing tool, a policy that ultimately promised more than 174 million acres, most of it west of the Mississippi River.
The shaded belts on this sheet can be misleading because they represent zones within which alternating sections were granted, not a solid transfer of every acre, and many parcels were never sold and later reverted to the government. Even so, the image proved powerful. Donaldson included it to accompany his exhaustive analysis of the public domain, and it likely informed an 1884 Democratic campaign broadside that decried a giveaway of public lands to special interests.
CONDITION
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