1855 Sketch of the Public Surveys in the State of Louisiana
DESCRIPTION
This detailed government survey map provides a revealing picture of Louisiana’s land system in 1855, recording not only completed public surveys but also the enormous areas of swamp and overflowed land that complicated settlement and development.
Prepared under Surveyor General William J. McCulloh, the map divides Louisiana into its federal land districts and overlays the state with township and range lines. A detailed reference key identifies the status of individual surveys, including completed work, surveys under contract and areas requiring correction.
Surveying a Difficult Landscape
Louisiana presented federal surveyors with challenges quite different from those encountered across the open lands of the Midwest. The Mississippi River and its network of bayous, wetlands and seasonally flooded lowlands dominate the geography of the state. Large areas are specifically identified as “Swamp and Overflowed Lands,” reflecting the federal government's efforts to classify lands that were difficult to cultivate or develop. The map also records railroad reservations, waterways, towns and the expanding township grid, illustrating how the federal land system was adapted to Louisiana's complicated physical geography.
One particularly interesting feature is the identification of the Baron de Bastrop claim in northern Louisiana. Bastrop was actually Philip Hendrik Nering Bögel, a Dutch-born land speculator whose enormous colonial land claims became part of the complicated history of land ownership in Louisiana and Texas. By the time of this map, the claim is explicitly marked “Rejected.” Combined with the survey grid and extensive swamp lands, this detail makes the map an unusually informative record of the competing land claims, federal surveys and environmental realities that shaped nineteenth-century Louisiana.
CONDITION
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