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Michigan With No Thumb

This map depicts Michigan oddly with no thumb and with a range of mountains extending down to Florida.  It carefully marks waterway portages that link the Great Lakes with the Mississippi river system and points out several mines including one of copper at present day Chicago.

California as an Island

From 1622 to the middle 1700s European mapmakers were drawing California as an island separate from North America.  In 1701 Jesuit missionary Father Eusebio Francisco Kino walked around Baja California and proved that California was not an island.

German Michigan

In 1860, one-quarter of the foreign-born population in Michigan was from Germany.  These two maps of Michigan appeared in two popular German-made atlases, made when many western Europeans were immigrating to the United States.  

L'Enfant's Legacy

In 1790, The newly formed US Congress passed the Residence Act allowing for the creation of a new city ‘not more than 10 miles square’ as the seat of the Federal government.  The site chosen by George Washington sat between the Potomac and Anacostia rivers making the city accessible for commerce

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