North End of Lake Michigan Including the Beaver Island Group, 1855 Lake Survey chart

Summary

This is a 1:120,000-scale chart of the north end of Lake Michigan and the Beaver Island group, engraved from trigonometrical surveys directed by Capt. John N. Macomb, Topographical Engineers, in 1854 and 1855, as part of the US government’s Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes.¹ The scan held here is a “Duplicate” print bearing a handwritten presentation inscription: “Detroit April 1st 1861. Presented to the Geographical & Statistical Soc’y of N.Y. with Capt. Meade’s compl’ts,” signed in print below by “Geo. G. Meade, Capt. Top’l Engineers, Sup’t Survey N. and N.W. Lakes.”² This is George Gordon Meade, who would command the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg two years later; in 1861 he was Superintendent of the US Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes, based in Detroit. The chart predates and independently corroborates several details in Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes (1902), while also showing how the light stations changed in the intervening decades.

A separately catalogued Leventhal Map & Education Center impression, whose provenance gives publication as [1857], is also held. It carries the same title and 1854–55 survey statement. This confirms the chart’s wider surviving holding history but does not resolve whether its title-block date, the NOAA catalogue year, or a specific later impression date should control a single publication-date claim.

Contents

Title block: “NORTH END OF LAKE MICHIGAN INCLUDING THE BEAVER ISLAND GROUP. From trigonometrical Surveys under the direction of the Topographical Bureau of the War Department in obedience to Acts of Congress requiring the Survey of the Northern and North Western Lakes under the orders of Captain J.N. Macomb Topographical Engineers in 1854 & 1855. Scale 1/120,000.” Engraved by W. H. Dougal.¹

Triangulation credits note (transcribed in full from the chart): general triangulation and hydrography remote from shore by Capt. J. N. Macomb; secondary triangulation, topography and minute hydrography of Hog Island, Garden Island and the north end of Beaver Island by Lieut. W. F. Raynolds in 1854; of the remainder of Beaver Island and the north coast west of Point Patterson by assistants W. H. Hearding, J. H. Foster and J. L. Beghem in 1855; of the north coast from Pt. Patterson to Mille Coquins Point by assistants G. W. Lamson and D. F. Henry in 1854; and of “High, Gull, Trout, Whiskey and Squaw Islands, and of the North coast from Mille Coquins Point to Hat Island meridian,” by assistants G. W. Lamson, H. Gillman and sub-assistant J. B. Williams in 1855.¹ This directly documents the earliest systematic American survey of Gull Island Reef, High Island and the island now called Ojibwa Island (see Squaw Island Light Station).

“Light Houses” table (bottom right of the sheet), transcribed in full:

No Squaw Island light appears in this table, consistent with the chart’s own 1855 survey crediting no light there yet (see Squaw Island Light Station).¹

“Sailing Directions” box (left side of the sheet) gives compass routes between Beaver Harbor, Waugoshance Light House, Manitou Passage, Green Bay and Chicago, all corrected to true meridian with distances in statute miles — including “From Waugoshance Light House to Light House on South bluff, head of Beaver Island, 28¾ miles,” a direct predecessor to the routes tabulated in Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes 47 years later.¹

Inland road and settlement corridor: although prepared as a nautical chart, the sheet also shows inland topography in unusually useful detail. At Saint James/Beaver Harbor it depicts dense rectangular clearings, from which an approximately north-south corridor extends into the island. Farther south are additional aligned clearings and a linear trace running north from the northeastern vicinity of the lake now called Lake Geneserath.¹ These features are unlabeled. Their form and orientation are consistent with Strang’s 1854 statement that a principal road ran from Saint James “due South to Galilee” and that long farm lots abutted the two main roads.³ This is strong contextual identification of a Strang-era road-and-farm axis, but not direct evidence that the Lake Survey called it King’s Highway or that its full centerline exactly matches the modern road.

The 1907 chart more clearly redraws two nearly collinear but disconnected segments. The 1911 chart then labels the northern segment “Kings Highway” while again leaving a substantial blank before the separate segment north of Lake Geneserath.⁴ Those later sheets strengthen the road’s identification and the reality of the mapped interruption; because their authorities include earlier Lake Survey work, they do not prove that the road was newly surveyed or continuously passable at either later issue date.

Significance

Held alongside Scott’s 1902 Coast Pilot, this chart lets several claims about the Beaver Island lights be checked across nearly half a century: the Beaver Harbor light’s height above the lake nearly doubled (30 ft revolving “fixed” light $\to$ 34 ft tower with red 4th-order lens after an 1870 rebuild, per Elizabeth Whitney Williams’s memoir — see Beaver Island Harbor Light), the head-of-island light’s character changed from “revolving” to “fixed, varied by flashes,” and the Squaw Island light did not yet exist. The Meade presentation inscription also documents the pre-Civil War US Lake Survey’s institutional history and its superintendent’s identity, independent of Meade’s later Civil War fame.

Sources

Added 28 July 2026 · revised 9 August 2026. Recent changes