Michigan, Wisconsin & Iowa Map 1857 Regional Print - Lansing, Madison, Des Moines

Henry Darwin Rogers and Alexander Keith Johnston issued this States of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa sheet in 1857, published in London by Edward Stanford and engraved by W. & A.K. Johnston of Edinburgh, part of their Atlas of the United States of North America, Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Mexico, Central America, Cuba, and Jamaica. This printing shows each state in its own outline color, Michigan in pink, Wisconsin in green, and Iowa in orange, with proposed Pacific Railway routes marked in purple. The sheet maps all three states jointly, a British-published perspective on the American Midwest drawn up by an American geologist working with Scottish engravers.

The three states' outlines are distinctly colored across the sheet, a settlement pattern still concentrated toward each state's eastern or southern counties in the mid-1850s. The proposed Pacific Railway routes marked in purple capture a transcontinental rail line that existed only on paper in 1857, years before any such route was actually built. County-level detail underpins the state outlines, tracing the administrative divisions already established across this fast-growing stretch of the Old Northwest. Together the state colors, the proposed railway, and the county lines sketch three states on the eve of the rapid settlement the following decades would bring.

For a Michigan, Wisconsin, or Iowa family with mid-19th-century roots, or a collector drawn to this British-published perspective on the American Midwest, this sheet has a specific pull. The store also carries Michigan and Wisconsin combined in Mitchell's later 1882 sheet elsewhere in this collection, and Iowa separately from several other editions; this 1857 Rogers and Johnston sheet is the only one in the store to combine all three states while marking the still-unbuilt Pacific Railway. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.