Michigan Map 1845 State Print - Detroit, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor

Sidney Morse and Samuel Breese, working in New York, published this map of Michigan in 1845 as part of Morse's North American Atlas, issued by Harper & Brothers across nine illustrated parts sold for twenty-five cents apiece. Morse and Breese pioneered the cerographic wax-engraving process used to print the map, a technique cheaper than copper-plate engraving that let Harper's price the atlas within reach of ordinary households, and this sheet carries an explanation panel decoding its symbols for towns, roads, railroads, and canals. Michigan is shown here just eight years after statehood, its settlement still concentrated in the Lower Peninsula while the Upper Peninsula remained almost entirely unorganized frontier known mainly for its timber and mineral prospects.

Detroit anchors the map as the state capital, a position it had held since territorial days and would keep only two more years before the seat of government moved to the more centrally located Lansing in 1847. The Great Lakes shoreline bounds the state on three sides, the dominant transportation network for a state whose interior roads and railroads were still in their earliest stages. Towns cluster densely along the southeastern shore near Detroit and thin quickly moving north and west into the timber country. Together the capital, the lakeshore, and the sparse interior settlement describe a young state whose growth still hugged the water almost entirely.

A Michigan family with roots in the old Detroit-area towns will find this sheet catches the state in its earliest years as a member of the Union, and it suits a collector drawn to the fact that it shows Detroit still serving as capital, two years before that role passed to Lansing. The store also carries Michigan from Cram's 1878 railroad-and-township edition and his later 1893 printing, both drawn after Lansing had long since become the seat of government; this 1845 Morse sheet is the earliest Michigan map in the collection. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.