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Description

Very early separately-issued street plan of an addition to Superior, Wisconsin, printed in St. Paul, likely around 1857 or a bit earlier.

The plan shows a section of blocks to the west-southwest of Superior itself. There is an inset showing the addition in the context of the larger area, with Bay of Superior on Lake Superior, and Oneota in Minnesota shown. 

The lithographer, Holmes, Paye & Buechner, did separate jobs such as this one in the lead-up to the Panic of 1857. The opening of the canal at Sault St. Marie in 1855 made extracting resources from Lake Superior more attractive, but the short-lived boom was cut short by the national recession in 1857, which affected the new settlements in the Upper Midwest particularly poorly.

Rarity and Provenance

OCLC records only two institutional examples of the map, one at Yale and the other at Minnesota Historical Society.

Separate Minnesota Territory-printed maps such as this are extremely rare.

We received this map along with other examples as part of an MNHS deaccession.