Iowa and Wisconsin in 1838 - Dubuque, Madison, Milwaukee

This joint Iowa and Wisconsin map is part of Thomas G. Bradford's 1838 An Illustrated Atlas, published by Weeks, Jordan & Co. and Wiley and Putnam in the very year the Iowa Territory was formally organized, splitting off from the larger Wisconsin Territory that had itself only existed since 1836. Both territories sat on the leading edge of American settlement in the years following the 1832 Black Hawk War, which had broken Sac and Fox resistance in the region and opened millions of acres to incoming settlers moving up the Mississippi. George W. Boynton engraved the main map at a scale of about 1:1,600,000, paired with an inset labeled Part of Wisconsin and Iowa.

Both territories are still finding their administrative shape on this map, mapped in the atlas's signature hand-applied color at the exact moment their shared border was being formally drawn — a sheet that captures Iowa's very first year as a separate territory.

Iowa and Wisconsin families alike tend to reach for this one, a Midwestern transplant, or a collector adding to Bradford's 1838 series. Unlike our later 1874 statewide sheets for Iowa and Wisconsin, this one catches both territories together at the earliest possible moment, before Iowa even had its own separate identity on the map. The print is offered unframed and in multiple sizes.