1856 Sketch of the Public Surveys in Michigan
DESCRIPTION
At a moment when Michigan's interior was being surveyed, divided, sold, and settled, this remarkable government map records the process by which vast stretches of the state were transformed into the familiar grid of townships and ranges.
Mapping Michigan for Settlement
This mid-19th century survey map of Michigan was prepared under Leander Chapman, Surveyor General, at the Surveyor General's Office in Detroit, and dated October 23, 1856. Lithographed by Ackerman of New York, it was issued by the federal government as U.S. Senate Executive Document No. 5, 34th Congress, 3rd Session (1856–57), rather than as a commercial map intended for general sale.
Covering both peninsulas with an inset of Isle Royale, the map records the progress of Michigan's federal public-land surveys. The township-and-range grid is accompanied by letters, dots, crosses, and other symbols indicating the administrative status of each surveyed area. As explained in the key, these distinguish where field notes, plats, descriptive sheets, and registers had been received, transcribed, or completed, as well as townships requiring or undergoing resurvey. Blank townships indicate areas where the original surveys had been completed.
Michigan Growing Northward
Published just nineteen years after Michigan achieved statehood, the map appeared as settlement was pushing northward from the older communities of southern Michigan. Railroads, Great Lakes transportation, lumbering, mining, and inexpensive federal land were drawing settlers and investment into previously undeveloped areas. The public survey system made that expansion possible by dividing the landscape into legally defined parcels that could be sold, purchased, taxed, and developed. The contrast between the heavily surveyed Lower Peninsula and the less developed northern and Upper Peninsula lands provides a striking snapshot of Michigan in the midst of its transformation from frontier to rapidly developing state.
CONDITION
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