Military Map of the Indian Territory, compiled under the direction of 1st Lieut. E. H. Ruffner, Engineers (Department of the Missouri…
The northwest sheet of Lieutenant E. H. Ruffner’s 1875 military map of the Indian Territory, from Fort Dodge to the Antelope Hills: the Indian trails and wagon roads across the Cherokee Outlet, the Cheyenne and Arapaho country and the Panhandle, the springs and the dry beds of streams.
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 10 km (RMS 2.4 km at 10 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 first-order polynomial fit to 10 places read from the scan and matched to their positions today. See the methodology. |
| Version | 1.0.0, updated 2026-09-30 |
| Covers | Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas |
Downloads
- Google Earth overlay (KMZ) — free (5.5 MB)
- GeoTIFF, tinted trails, EPSG:4326 (8000 × 4928; QGIS, ArcGIS) — free (19.1 MB)
- Print sheet over today’s map (3600 × 2200 PNG) — free (3.5 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 10 places. From the Native Routes sources register; New York Public Library (the northwest sheet).
Credits
- From the Native Routes sources register; New York Public Library (the northwest 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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