Map and Profile of the Proposed Road from opposite Memphis, Tenn. to the St. Francis River, Arkansas T., exhibiting also the adjacent…
The Army engineers’ survey for the Military Road across the Mississippi swamps from opposite Memphis to the St. Francis River in 1833: the Indian Track and the Indian Trail that ran along the higher ground north of the new road, the bayous, lakes and cane brakes, and the landings and settlements of the time.
Source
| Map | Map and profile of the proposed road from opposite Memphis, Tenn. to the St. Francis River, Arkansas T. : exhibiting also, the adjacent country |
|---|---|
| Author | W. Howard, U.S. Civil Engineers, 1835 |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1835 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 5 km. Placed by hand in a map-queue session and approved by a person. If something sits in the wrong place, members can fix it with Fix placement on the map. Placed from only two fixed places, so the fit cannot check itself; its stated accuracy (5 km) allows for the 4% difference between the two-point scale and the printed scale bar. |
| Method | Placed by hand from two places that can still be fixed today — Memphis and Strong’s on the St. Francis (Madison, Arkansas) — with a rotation and scale between them (the result agrees with the map’s printed scale bar to within a few per cent); the 42 points are that transform sampled on a grid. The Mississippi’s channel has moved since 1833, so the river bank is not a reference. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-10-06 |
| Covers | Arkansas, Tennessee |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (0.8 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 5424; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (3.7 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (2.4 MB)
Project Homeland
This map is open for tracing into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source. Members trace a trail by clicking along it: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-10-06): First release: placed by hand at 42 places. From the Native Routes sources register; Library of Congress Geography and Map Division.
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; Library of Congress Geography and Map Division
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Library of Congress
Control points
The full list of control points with residuals is in control-points.geojson. Historic names indexed for search: names.geojson.
Something on this map sits in the wrong place? Members can show where with Fix placement on the map — confirmed fixes are tested against the map’s other control points each night and credited here. For anything else, report a problem.
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