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Wisconsin was first part of the Northwest Territory (1788-1800). As the country grew and expanded westward, new territories were configured from old ones. Wisconsin was successively a part of the Indiana Territory (1800-1809), Illinois Territory (1809-1818) and Michigan Territory (1818-1836).
The Wisconsin Territory initially included all of the present-day states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa, as well as part of the Dakotas east of the Missouri River. Much of the territory had originally been part of the Northwest Territory, which was ceded by Britain in 1783.
This map was created to accompany a congressional report and shows the then Wisconsin Territory, including present-day states of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and parts of North and South Dakota. Although not part of the Wisconsin Territory the map also includes northern Illinois.
Map of Wisconsin Territory 1836–1848. Wisconsin Territory was created by an act of the United States Congress on April 20, 1836. By fall of that year, the best prairie groves of the counties surrounding Milwaukee were occupied by New England farmers. [38]
The map shows townships in the Wisconsin Territory surveyed by 1837. Also depicted are roads, trails, natural land forms, vegetation, mill sites, and the lead and copper deposits known at the time. The long lots in Green Bay and Prairie du Chien reflect the French system of land holdings along riverfronts.
Ten years before statehood, settlement in Wisconsin was almost entirely restricted to the area south of the Fox and Wisconsin Rivers. The inset map shown here depicts the original extent of the territory, including parts of what are now Minnesota, Iowa, and North and South Dakota.
The Wisconsin Territory stretched north to the British-Canadian border and was originally bounded to the west by the Missouri River, although in 1838 an act of Congress made the Mississippi River the official western boundary.
