Military Map of the Indian Territory, compiled under the direction of 1st Lieut. E. H. Ruffner, Engineers (Department of the Missouri…
The southwest sheet of Lieutenant E. H. Ruffner’s 1875 military map of the Indian Territory: the Kiowa, Comanche and Wichita country around Fort Sill and the Wichita Mountains, with the Indian trails and roads from the Washita to the Red River.
Source
| Map | Military map of the Indian Territory |
|---|---|
| Author | E. H. Ruffner, U.S. Engineers, 1875 |
| Archive | New York Public Library |
| Rights | Public domain. Published 1875 — before 1931, so public domain in the United States. Evidence |
| Accuracy | About 5 km (RMS 1.2 km at 12 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 on the sheet’s own graticule: its degree and half-degree ticks were fitted with a polyconic projection, the other coordinate of each tick taken from that fit, and the 12 points warped with a first-order (affine) polynomial. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-09-30 |
| Covers | Oklahoma, Texas |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (5.8 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 5522; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (21.1 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (3.6 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 12 places. From the Native Routes sources register; New York Public Library (the southwest sheet).
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; New York Public Library (the southwest sheet)
- Georeferencing: Native Routes
- Scan: New York Public Library
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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