Blog Post 1: Chase County Kansas

In Outline Map of Chase Co. Kansas, 1901 published by the Northwest Publishing Company the audience can see a very clear depiction of the settlements, as well as the surrounding nature such as: creeks, rivers, and various open and undeveloped spaces. It is very obvious that this map is showing all of the untouched land in the western rural states. Ironically, the Homestead Act of 1862 was enacted shortly before this map was published. The Homestead Act gave the heads of the household 160 acres of land in rural western states as an incentive for people to expand west.

This also plays into the main silencer in this map is the space that was occupied by Native Americans. William Least Heat-Moon quoted Robert Baughman in PraryErth as ‘the government needing to come in and “clear the way”‘ before people were officially allowed to move westerly. Heat-Moon allures to the fact that many people were not even aware of the Native Americans occupying this land, because they was no way from them to obtain that knowledge.

This map does however do a nice job of detailing where the railroads, churches, schools, rivers, and more are located. The map also shows the careful placement of county lines and architecture being used as the separating factor for towns rather than railroads and rivers as seen by Heat-Moon in PraryErth. This map overall offers a deep and thorough analysis of Chase County for its time.

The Warren Mortgage Company that authored this map would have wanted a more detailed map to entice westward expansion and increase the economy by doing so. They were careful enough to include street names in portions of their map, in what I am assuming is because they wanted to show that this area was already developed and could not be owned, but if people were to expand then they would have the chance at their very own land. Overall this map was very well thought out for its purpose.