For this month’s map, we’ve chosen the earliest map in our collection that shows Morrison County. The map is a leaf from the book the “Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Minnesota” published by A. T. Andreas in 1874. We call it the Andreas atlas. While we have a few copies of the full Andreas atlas in our collections, over the years we’ve also received pages 164 and 165 separate from the book. These pages show Todd, Morrison, and Crow Wing Counties, and portions of Mille Lacs, Aitkin, and Cass.
The map has a number of fascinating features, including the markings for the type of timber found in the area, the locations of the homes of various prominent citizens, the Indian trail running from Mille Lacs Lake to the Skunk River, a Lumberman’s Road, and a scattering of post offices. On the 1874 map, Morrison County has only a few townships: Green Prairie, Culdrum, Swan River, Two Rivers, Little Falls, Belle Prairie, Pierz, and Bellevue. The old Fort Ripley Reservation takes up a sizeable chunk of land on the east side of the Mississippi River.
The Andreas atlas has been digitized as part of the Minnesota Digital Library and can be found online at Minnesota Reflections. Try this link to get to the document: https://collection.mndigital.org/catalog/mhs:1192#/image/0. If you have difficulty with that link, go to the home page of Minnesota Reflections and choose the option to browse by collection. Scroll down to the Minnesota Historical Society and select “view the collection.” The atlas is item number 7 in the collection. Click on either the image or the title to be taken to the digitized version of the book.
Or, stop on in at The Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Memorial Museum to see it in person.