Historic Map - Prairie du Chien, WI - 1870

Prairie du Chien, Crawford County, Wisconsin 1870. Chicago Lithog. Co.

Historic panoramic view map of Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, drawn by Albert Ruger in 1870, reprint. This beautifully colored historic map captures the town of Prairie du Chien as it appeared four years before the permanent pontoon bridge designed by Michael Spettel and John Lawler was built to span the Mississippi River. Since the arrival of the Milwaukee & Mississippi Railroad in 1857, trains were disassembled at Prairie du Chien and ferried across the Mississippi River where they were reassembled onto tracks on the other side, a less than ideal solution to expanding the railroad into Iowa.

French explorers Jacques Marquette and Louis Joliet arrived in the area on June 17, 1673, traveling by canoe in search of a route to the Mississippi River. A trading post was established in 1685 by French explorer Nicolas Perrot. The fur-trade continued to dominate Prairie du Chien's development through the mid-nineteenth century. Changing from French to British control after the French and Indian War, the city was used as a meeting point for British troops and their Native American allies during the American Revolutionary War. The area was formally granted to the United States through the Treaty of Paris in 1783, but it was not until after the War of 1812 that the city became fully American.

Construction of Fort Shelby began in 1814, as the United States recognized that the British were using Prairie du Chien to launch attacks from Canada. The British captured Fort Shelby in July of 1814 during the "Siege of Prairie du Chien" and held the city until the end of the war in 1815. Fort Crawford was constructed in 1816 to protect the strategic location of Prairie du Chien from future British attacks. A luxurious Victorian mansion built by H. Louis Dousman, the son of Wisconsin's first millionaire, Hercules L. Dousman, was built the same year that this map was published, 1870, on the site of the former Fort Shelby.

Features numbered references to the following locations:

1. Court House.
2. School Houses.
3. Prairie Du Chien College.
4. Fort Crawford.
5. St. Paul & Milwaukee Railroad Depot.

1. Lower Town Station.
2. Sisters School.

6. Congregational Church.
7. Episcopal Church.
8. Evangelical Church.
9. Methodist Church.
10. Roman Catholic Church.
11. Lutheran Church.