Minnesota, Dakota Territory & Nebraska Map 1865 Regional Print - St. Paul, Minneapolis, Yankton

This map of Minnesota, Dakota Territory, and Nebraska was produced by S. Augustus Mitchell Jr. and published in 1865 by E.H. Butler & Co. as part of Mitchell's New Reference Atlas for Colleges, Libraries, Families and Counting Houses, a fifty-five-map series. Printed as two hand-colored maps sharing a single sheet, its relief shown by hachures, the sheet covers Minnesota and the still-undivided Dakota Territory on one map and Nebraska Territory on the other, a practical layout for a region still being carved into its eventual state lines. It records the upper plains in 1865, a year when Dakota remained a single unsplit territory and Nebraska had not yet become a state, both still years from the boundaries familiar today.

Minnesota is shown fully organized as a state, anchored by St. Paul and neighboring Minneapolis along the Mississippi River, with Lake Superior tracing its northeastern border. The Dakota Territory, covering the land that would become both North Dakota and South Dakota, appears here as a single undivided territory, its county lines still sparse and its settlements concentrated along the Missouri River in the area nearer present-day South Dakota, well ahead of the more remote counties that would later form North Dakota. Nebraska Territory, on the accompanying map, is shown with its own developing counties and the Great Sand Hills marked, still two years from statehood. Together the sheet captures a stretch of the northern plains only just beginning to be organized on paper.

Notice that Dakota is still one territory here, not two; that alone makes this a distinctive find for a collector, and it's a fitting choice too for anyone with roots in Minnesota, the Dakotas, or Nebraska who wants to see the region before it was carved into today's states. A St. Paul or Omaha buyer in particular will find their city recorded at the very start of the northern plains' settlement. It is available unframed in a full range of sizes, from a compact study print to a larger statement piece for an office or study.