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Mapping activities by the United States government were constrained by the strict interpretation of the U.S. Constitution which prevailed before the Civil War. The division of responsibility between the Federal and state governments followed a simple formula: if the states could undertake a given activity, it was their responsibility to do so, whether or not they chose to do so. This situation had a profound effect on governmental mapping activities. Because individual states were clearly capable of surveying their own territories, they were held to be responsible for topographical mapping. Some states, such as Massachusetts in the 1840s, did make detailed topographical maps, but most did not. For its part, the Federal government mapped the Public Domain, the Western lands which had yet to be organized into states. Exhibited here, as an example, is one of the maps from J. C. Frémont’s 1845 report of his expeditions to determine a route for a transcontinental railroad [item 35]. On the other hand, the mapping of the entire coast was clearly beyond the capability of individual states, so that responsibility fell to the Federal government. After a hesitant start, the U.S. Coast Survey developed into a large agency that worked within all the coastal states [items 36-38].
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The Civil War intensified the constitutional division between the Federal and state governments. In reaction to this, Congress took an increasingly active role after the war in activities which infringed state autonomy. The changing balance of authority and responsibility had significant cartographic results. Immediately after the war, several Northern states petitioned Congress for technical help in correcting existing cadastral and other surveys so as to make accurate topographic base maps for geological purposes. In 1871, Congress authorized the U.S. Coast Survey to provide that help. The result was a series of ten surveys made by state residents who were trained, equipped, funded, and supervised by the Coast Survey. A professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin, for example, undertook several seasons of fieldwork between 1874 and 1891 for a triangulation intended to provide geometrical control for the state’s geological map [items 39-40]. The surveys did not prove to be effective, so in 1895 the Coast Survey disbanded the few still in operation. Thereafter, the Coast Survey acted directly within the states. |
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Established in 1879, the U.S. Geological Survey was initially constrained to function solely within the Public Domain. Its second director, John Wesley Powell, had a much larger vision and pushed Congress to approve a national geological map (1882); Powell then established a program to create a national topographical survey to provide the basis for that map. Constitutional constraints required that this survey was implemented through cooperative agreements with each state. The first state to work with the Federal government in this regard was Massachusetts. A special commission was established to organize the state’s side of the work, which entailed a certain amount of detailed surveying and funding half the overall cost. The survey itself ran from 1884 to 1888 and the “preliminary edition” of the topographical atlas was published in 1890 [items 41-44]. In 1925, in line with the ongoing realignment of state and Federal power, Congress changed the ground rules for topographical surveying: henceforth, the U.S. Geological Survey could initiate a survey of a state, although Federal-state cooperation was still preferred.
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| The joint responsibility for topographical mapping extended to the printing plates. When, after 1950, the U.S. Geological Survey superceded its old 1:62,500 series, prepared on copper plates, with the newer 1:24,000 series, prepared photo-mechanically, the agency divested itself of its thousands of copper printing plates, it dutifully turned the plates over to the respective states for disposal. One set of plates, for the Portland Quadrangle, was eventually donated to the Osher Map Library [items 45-46]. | |
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Contact: oml@usm.maine.edu
©2003 Osher Map Library University of Southern Maine |
