Connecticut Western Reserve Maps

Maps of the Connecticut Western Reserve were created by the original Connecticut Land Company survey teams in 1796-1978 and long after the region was assumed into the Northwest Territory in 1800 and the State of Ohio in 1803.

Maps are mirrors of an aspect of the real world. Maps, as graphic representations, describe symbolically a place in time. Importantly, as symbols maps tell us much about political, social, and cultural assumptions and practices of the time and place in which they were and are created. Thus maps may reveal much about the inhabitants' senses of place and identity.

For an excellent brief history of maps of the Western Reserve, see "First Maps of Cleveland the Western Reserve," part of Cleveland Memory, at http://web.ulib.csuohio.edu/speccoll/maps/firsts.html.

A "zoomable" 1826 map of the Western Reserve--the iconic Savery map--is available via the David Rumsey Map Collection at http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps1788.html.