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Description

Important Early Map of Montana Territory

Fine early map of Montana Territory, published by the General Land Office in 1887.

The map provides exceptional detail in the surveyed regions of Montana Territory, but also highlights just how much of Montana was as yet unexplored, unsurveyed and largely unmapped, other than primitive deails on watershed and topography.  The detail in the map, based upon the most up to date government surveys, was the best available information to the General Land Office at the time of publication.

Includes a key showing the offices of the Surveyor General, Land Offices, Townships which have been subdivided, county seats, boundaries of land districts, railroads, military reservations, and Indian Reservations. Several Indian Treaties are also noted.  

The area in gold shows the proposed extension of the Northern Cheyenne Reservation, based upon a proposal made in 1886.

Yosemite appears at the bottom of the map, just a few years after it became a National Park.

General Land Office Biography

The General Land Office (GLO) refers to the independent agency in the United States that was in charge of public domain lands. Created in 1812, it assumed the responsibilities for public domain lands from the United States Department of the Treasury. The Treasury had overseen the survey of the Northwest Territory, but as more area was added to the United States, a new agency was necessary to survey the new lands.

Eventually, the GLO would be responsible for the surveying, platting, and sale of the majority of the land west of the Mississippi, with the exception of Texas. When the Secretary of the Interior was created in 1849, the GLO was placed under its authority. Until the creation of the Forest Service in 1905, the GLO also managed forest lands that had been removed from public domain. In additional to managing the fees and sales of land, the GLO produced maps and plans of the areas and plots they surveyed. In 1946, the GLO merged with the United States Grazing Service to become the Bureau of Land Management.