Minnesota Maps

The tiny region of the globe now known as Minnesota has appeared on maps for more than five centuries-in the sketchy first impressions of explorers, exuberant promotions of boosters, and analytical tools of planners and managers. This lavish treasury of almost 100 maps illuminates the imagined, real, and changing landscape of Minnesota.

Preeminent geographer David Lanegran embarks on his words-and-maps journey by introducing attempts to find a route to China around the American continent. Changes in early military and political maps measured the country's expanding boundaries, and increasingly detailed maps encouraged settlement.

Lanegran offers stories of the fascinating controversies that fueled the state's development and how maps made a difference in their outcome. Readers learn about Duluth's port war with Superior, Wisconsin, how railroads dictated the shape of cities like Brainerd, the importance of the state's first 1919 highway map, and how Boundary Waters maps created a tourism bonanza.

David A Lanegran holds the John S. Holl Endowed Chair of Geography at Macalester College in St. Paul. Carol Urness is curator emerita at the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota.