Minnesota Territory Map 1857 Territorial Print - St. Paul, Minneapolis, Duluth

Henry Darwin Rogers and Alexander Keith Johnston issued this Territory of Minnesota 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. This printing shows the territory in outline color with its regions highlighted and proposed railway lines marked in purple, and even notes the quality of its water supply as good or saltish in places. The sheet maps Minnesota as a territory, a year before its 1858 admission to the Union, its boundaries reaching north to British America.

The territory's boundary with British America anchors the sheet's northern edge, a political geography that predates Minnesota's statehood by a single year. Proposed railway lines marked in purple capture a transportation network that existed only as a plan in 1857, well before Minnesota's rail system was actually built. Regional divisions are highlighted across the territory, an early administrative geography drawn up before the county system that would follow statehood. Together the British America boundary, the proposed railways, and the territorial divisions sketch Minnesota in its final year before becoming a state, a snapshot of the territory just as its population was crossing the threshold required for admission to the Union.

For a Minnesota family with territorial-era roots, or a collector drawn to this British-published perspective on the American frontier, this sheet has a specific pull. The store also carries Minnesota from Cram's 1893 edition and Mitchell's later 1884 sheet elsewhere in this collection; this 1857 Rogers and Johnston sheet is the only one in the store to map Minnesota while it was still a territory, a year before statehood. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.