Dakota Territory, prepared by order of Brig. Gen. A. H. Terry, commanding the Department (Office of the Chief of Engineers, 1878)
The Army’s 1878 map of Dakota Territory: the Indian trails and military roads between the Missouri River forts, the Great Sioux Reservation of the 1868 treaty, the Black Hills, and the lands of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, the Sisseton and Wahpeton, and the Yankton.
Source
| Map | Dakota Territory |
|---|---|
| Author | Department of Dakota (Gen. A. H. Terry), 1878 |
| Archive | Library of Congress |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1878 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 25 km (RMS 6.3 km at 18 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 18 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-09-30 |
| Covers | North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (6.6 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 6412; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (21.9 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (2.1 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 (2026-09-30): First release: placed by hand at 18 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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