Indian Trails and Villages of Chicago and of Cook, DuPage and Will Counties, Ills. (1804) (Albert F. Scharf, 1900–1901)
Albert F. Scharf’s map of the trails and villages of the Chicago region as they were about 1804: the lettered and numbered trails, portages, villages and camps, drawn over the township grid of Cook, DuPage and Will counties.
Source
| Map | 1900 Map - Chicagoland Indian Trails of 1804 by Scharf |
|---|---|
| Author | Albert F. Scharf, 1901 |
| Archive | Wikimedia Commons |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1901 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 4 km (RMS 1.1 km at 42 control points). 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. |
| Method | Placed by hand: a second-order polynomial fit to 42 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-09-30 |
| Covers | Illinois, Indiana |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (5.3 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (3848 × 3319; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (3.2 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (4.3 MB)
Project Homeland
This map’s trails are traced into Project Homeland, one map of the trail network melded from every traced source, where they are compared with the other maps’ lines. Members can trace more of them: Trace a trail on the map.
Changelog
- 1.0.0 (2026-09-30): First release: placed by hand at 42 places. From the Native Routes sources register; Wikimedia Commons (from the Chicago Historical Society’s reproduction).
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; Wikimedia Commons (from the Chicago Historical Society’s reproduction)
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: Wikimedia Commons
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.
Talk about this map
Start a thread All discussions
Know this map? Join free to add field notes, fix where a place sits on the map, and help find more maps.Join free