Nebraska Territory Map 1857 Territorial Print - Omaha, Bellevue, Nebraska City

Henry Darwin Rogers and Alexander Keith Johnston issued this Territory of Nebraska 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 marks the territory in a blue outline, drawn up nearly two decades before Nebraska's own 1867 statehood, at a scale of roughly 54.5 miles to the inch. The sheet maps the Nebraska Territory as it stood in 1857, a vast, largely unorganized stretch of the central Plains.

The territory's blue outline traces boundaries that, in 1857, covered a far larger area than the state Nebraska would eventually become, before subsequent territorial splits reduced it to its present size. The map's scale allows a broad, sweeping view of the Plains rather than the detailed county divisions that would only come after statehood. Settlement in 1857 remained sparse and concentrated near the territory's eastern edge along the Missouri River. Together the broad outline, the scale, and the sparse eastern settlement sketch a territory still a decade from statehood and still largely unorganized, its vast interior years away from the county divisions later maps would show.

For a Nebraska 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 Nebraska from Cram's 1893 and 1883 editions and Asher & Adams' 1874 atlas, and combined with Kansas in Mitchell's later 1884 sheet elsewhere in this collection; this 1857 Rogers and Johnston sheet is the only one in the store to map Nebraska while it was still an unorganized territory. It's printed unframed and available in a range of sizes to fit whatever wall it's headed for.