Tracing the Development of the General Land Office’s “National Map”: From Lands Surveyed to Territorial Acquisitions

From the foundation of the republic, the government of the United States promoted western expansion through the surveying and sales of the public domain. The agency responsible over most of this period, the General Land Office (GLO), produced maps of the progress of surveying and sales on an annual basis. This article reviews a notable series, from the first “connected” map (i.e., one showing all the public lands in a single view) in 1864 until the last in 1953. In each period, the national map produced by the agency reflects the concerns of the time, as it records the preparations for the sale of the public domain for settlement. In the first decades of the connected maps, the primary thematic elements documented the work of GLO in surveying what is now called the Public Land Survey System (PLSS). These maps evolved to include a treatment of “territorial acquisitions,” which eventually became the most prominent thematic element, while still including a representation of the PLSS grid. The series’ first depictions of territorial acquisitions included an exceptional error, one of several, indicating that the Oregon Country was part of the Louisiana Purchase. Commissioner Binger Hermann expounded his understanding of the United States’ territorial history in an eighty-seven page monograph, an unusual recognition of a cartographic error, which led to corrections. The long history of this map series provides material to understand the role of maps in the history of the country.