This web site is dedicated to a historic map of the Arkansas River. The map was made in 1870 and shows details along the river from Little Rock Arkansas to Fort Gibson in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma).

The map was made in 1870 by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Colonal J.N. Macomb, along with Assistant Engineer S.T. Abert, and probably a good-sized support staff of soldiers. The map was clearly intended for navigation of the river and shows low-water depths across the channel at close intervals, as well as gravel bars and shoals, ferry and landing locations, and other features important to river travel.

In addition, the map shows natural and cultural features near the river that may be of great interest to archaeologists, historians, geographers, or anyone curious about what this stretch of the river was like in 1870. These features include towns and military forts, residences and farm fields with the name of the land owner, named tributaries and islands, battle fields and grave sites, supply stores, mills, and even one shipwreck.

The river has changed a great deal since 1870, and much of the river shown in this map is now deep under the water of impounded reservoirs. This map therefore serves as a detailed record of the river's past. I hope that this web site helps make this record accessible as a historic document. If you have found it useful, or if you have comments or suggestions, please let me know!

How the maps are indexed:

I have indexed the map features two different ways: by feature type in the Map Index, and by map sheet on the Full Map Sheets jpeg page. Be warned that the jpegs are quite large (see technical details below). If you are interested in what the maps look like, and what the level of detail is, you may want to check out the Gallery of points of interest.

More about the map:

I have so far been able to find very little information concerning the map, except what is written on the title sheet. You can see a scan of the whole sheet here (sheet 00). Below is a text reproduction, as well as I can copy the style here:

MAP
OF THE
ARKANSAS RIVER
FROM
FORT GIBSON, INDIAN TERRY
TO LITTLE ROCK, ARK;
CONSISTING OF 82 SHEETS
Scale - One Inch to 1000 Feet
Made under the direction of J.N. MACOMB, Colonel, U.S. Corps of Engineers
by S.T. Abert, Asst. Engineer
REDUCTION MADE BY PANTOGRAPH BY J.R. VAN FRANK
FIELD WORK DONE.......................................................................................................................................REDUCTION MADE
1870..................................................................................................................................................................................................1887
U.S. Engineer Office, Little Rock, Ark; Aug 1, 1887.................................Official H.S. Taber, Captain of Engineers

About the Map Makers:

Colonal John Navarre Macomb began his military career in 1828 at the age of 14. In 1838 he became a topographical engineer and made numerous maps throughout his time in the Army, until his retirement in 1882. You can read about his military career here at the Arlington National Cemetery Website, and about the history of the U.S. Corps of Topographical Engineers here.

I have been able to find very little about S.T. Abert or J.R. Van Frank, except that both worked as cartographers for the Army and were involved in the construction of other maps throughout the country.

Henry Sheldon Taber was a Captain of Engineers who conducted river work in Arkansas, Indian Territory, and elsewhere. Click here to read an 1885 letter from Taber concerning river improvements along the Arkansas River (near the bottom of the page - you can use your browser to search for "Taber" within the page).

Technical details concerning the copies:

The map consists of a title sheet and 82 separate map sheets. The copies of the map I have found are about 50 by 30 cm in size (20 by 14 inches). The original map sheets were much larger. Copies were made in 1887 with a pantograph (a mechanical device with scissor-crossed arms to replicate a traced drawing on another sheet of paper). The 1887 copies are reductions, but it is unclear how much the copies are reduced from the original.

I found two sets of copies at the Arkansas Archeological Survey: a full set of map sheets at the home office at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, and a set of the Arkansas sheets only (numbers 28-82) at the Arkansas Tech University Station in Russelville. Both are at least second-generation copies, and it took quite a bit of magnifying and squinting to make out all of the names and features on the maps to transcribe the information. The Russelville copies are generally cleaner, so for the full map sheet jpegs avaiable here I use this set for the Arkansas portions. The Indian Territory (now Oklahoma) map sheets are from the Fayetteville copy. These don't reproduce as well, but may actually be more detailed copies.

For this project, I scanned the sheets on a large-format scanner at 300 dpi and saved the files in TIFF format. These files are quite large (about 23,000 kb each). To make them available over this web page, I reduced the size of each file by 80% and saved them in medium-quality jpeg format. The files are still fairly large (ranging from 800 to 1400 kb each), but reducing the resolution further would render them unreadable. Some small features may be difficult or impossible to make out in the jpeg versions - if you are interested in the full-sized TIFF copies just let me know and I can send them to you on CD.

I am an archaeologist currently living and working in West Fork, Arkansas. I came across this map while conducting research for my dissertation, which concerns prehistoric earthworks along the Arkansas River and adjacent regions. You can read more about my other projects here.