Michigan in 1838 - Detroit, Lansing, Ann Arbor

Published just a year after Michigan entered the Union as the 26th state, this 1838 map is part of Thomas G. Bradford's An Illustrated Atlas, issued by Weeks, Jordan & Co. and Wiley and Putnam. Michigan's path to statehood had been anything but smooth — a bitter border dispute with Ohio over a narrow strip of land around Toledo, the so-called Toledo War, had to be resolved by Congress in 1836 before Michigan could be admitted, and the state accepted the Upper Peninsula as compensation for giving up its claim, a trade that looked like a poor consolation prize at the time but turned out to hold some of the richest mineral deposits in the country. George W. Boynton engraved the map at roughly 1:1,600,000, paired with an inset labeled Northwest Part of Michigan.

Lake Michigan and Lake Superior anchor the state's outline in the atlas's characteristic hand-applied color, a fresh snapshot of a state whose final shape, including that contested Upper Peninsula, had only just been settled on paper.

A Michigan family with roots stretching back to the earliest years of statehood will likely respond to this one, as will a Great Lakes transplant homesick for Michigan winters, or a collector adding to a run of Bradford's 1838 sheets. Offered unframed, in a range of sizes.