A Compleat Map of North-Carolina from an Actual Survey (John Collet, 1770)
Captain John Collet’s survey map of the colony: the Trading Path west from the Haw, the Path to the Cherokee Nation, the Catawba lands and the Tuscarora town, with the roads, fords and mills between them.
Source
| Map | A compleat map of North-Carolina from an actual survey |
|---|---|
| Author | John Collet, 1770 |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1770 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 25 km (RMS 6.1 km at 36 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 smoothing thin-plate spline through 36 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.1, updated 2026-10-06 |
| Covers | North Carolina, South Carolina |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (5.5 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 3888; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (22 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (6.3 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
- 1.0.1 (2026-10-06): Fix: place names re-placed where the map draws them (they had been set by an approximation of the warp: median 5.9 km, up to 10 km off).
- 1.0.0 (2026-09-30): First release: placed by hand at 36 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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