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An extremely rare map of Arkansas and the earliest large format map of the state, published less than 3 years after its admission to the Union on June 15, 1836.
Tanner's map depicts the new state divided by the Survey of Public Lands into the "Lawrence," "Arkansas," "Fayetteville," and "Red River" Districts and further sub-divided into its 30 original counties. A variety of symbols are employed to indicate railroads and roads (including the Overland Trails), canals, and topographical features such as prairies and swamps. The familiar grid of townships and sections imposed by the Survey of Public Lands dominates the map-this closely matches a Map of Arkansas Surveying District published by the General Land Office later in 1839 and is evidence that Tanner used the most up-to-date sources. Overall, Arkansas settlement was strikingly sparse at this early date, with the total population still under 100,000 and heavily concentrated in the eastern counties.
Of particular interest are Miller and Lafayette Counties in the far southwest, at the time the subject of a territorial dispute with the then-independent Republic of Texas. Here they are assigned a somewhat ambiguous status, depicted within Arkansas' borders but not included in the Arkansas Survey District. All of Miller was ceded to Texas when it became a state in 1845, but the county was later reconstituted from the western portion of Lafayette County.
This is the first large-scale map to be published of Arkansas, and we are aware of only 3 earlier maps of the state: Edward Callan's small-scale A New Map of Arkansas and another small map in Tanner's Universal Atlas, both of which appeared in 1836, and Map of Arkansas Surveying District, which appeared in an 1837 Congressional report.
Background
The map was separately published as early as April 3, 1839, when we find the following advertisement in the Arkansas Gazette:
NEW MAP OF ARKANSAS
JUST received, and for sale at the Gazette office, " A new Map of the State of Arkansas, constructed principally from the United States surveys, exhibiting counties, townships, and sections, by H.S. Tanner, 1839." Price, handsomely mounted on rollers, and varnished, $3; neatly done up in morocco, $1.50.
Though our example no longer has the morocco folder, both the folds and an adhesive stain along the left margin indicate that it was one of these separately issued copies. The map was also included in the 1839 final (and essentially unobtainabl) edition of Henry Tanner's American Atlas. Tanner's life and work-and the American Atlas in particular-merit an entire chapter in Ristow's American Maps and Mapmakers (chap. 13). Among other things, Ristow quotes and extremely positive review of Tanner's atlas by the scholar Jared Sparks:
…on the whole as an American Atlas, we believe Mr. Tanner's work to hold a rank far above any other, which has been published. The authentic documents, to which he had access, the abundance of his materials, the apparent fidelity, with which they are compiled, the accurate construction of his maps, and the elegance with which they are executed, all these afford ample proofs of the high character of the work, of its usefulness as a means of extending the geographic knowledge of our own country, and of its claims to public patronage. (Ristow, p. 197)
The map is extraordinarily rare in any form, with OCLC locating but three institutional holdings and a fourth known in the Library of Congress. It is not held in the Rumsey collection, and the most recent sales record we can locate is a 1922 Anderson Galleries auction catalog, which already at this early date describes it as "extremely rare."
