MSU Libraries

An interactive map has been created which displays the land parcels selected by the State of Michigan under the Morrill Land Grant College Act. 

In 1863 Michigan participated in the program established by the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862 to establish an agricultural college using funds gained from a grant of federal lands. This map displays the 240,000 acres selected.

The legal land description of each parcel is listed in the book, The State of Michigan and the Morrill Land Grant College Act of 1862. Author Herbert Berg had obtained photocopies of the list from the...

In 1790, The newly formed US Congress passed the Residence Act allowing for the creation of a new city ‘not more than 10 miles square’ as the seat of the Federal government.  The site chosen by George Washington sat between the Potomac and Anacostia rivers making the city accessible for commerce but also defensible against naval attack.  Conveniently, it was also just up the road from Washington’s home at Mount Vernon. 

Fig. 1: Miniature Portrait of Andrew Ellicott, 1799. Source: Wikipedia

The surveyor Andrew Ellicott (Fig. 1), who would later serve as the US boundary...

Celebrate GIS Day on Nov. 16th by participating in a humanitarian mapping project, no GIS experience needed! Bring your laptop to the Map library CTL and join us in developing map data to aid a humanitarian project. We will be helping the Humanitarian Open Street Mapping Project – their past projects have included working on mapping earthquake stricken areas in Nepal and recently Haiti in the aftermath of hurricane Matthew. The exact project we will work on is to be determined, but likely will involve improving our knowledge of road networks in an African country by looking at satellite...

Ionia, Ionia County, Michigan Terr’y. Published by Pendletons Lithography in Boston in 1835, probably for Nathaniel Brown.

This map shows a thriving town site.  The only problem was that it was a complete fiction.  The real Ionia, Michigan, Seat of Ionia County, had been placed two miles west of this site in 1833.

At the time the map was made in 1835, half of the square-mile section had been purchased by Chicago-based land speculator Nathaniel Brown.  The other half was still owned by the Federal Government.  Brown had the idea of a sawmill anchoring a community that...