As a Michiganian whose educational background is in historical geography, I have long been intrigued as to how Michigan’s public domain was dispensed over the years. 

Initially, the federal government controlled nearly all property in what is now Michigan after treaties with the Indians gave the United States sole rights to the land. Once surveyed, officials in Washington, DC, sold much of Michigan territory through various federal land offices, the real estate going for about $1.25 per acre. But the vast proportion of this public property across our Great Lakes State—somewhere around two-thirds of the total—was simply given away.

Much of this largess went to private enterprises. Land grants were bestowed to build roads, canals and railroads. Educational interests also fared well. The University of Michigan and Michigan State University (the
nation’s first land-grant college) received generous chunks of the public domain. Most soldiers who fought with U.S. forces prior to the Civil War received military bounty lands. Congress even conveyed all swamplands and desired salt springs within our borders, plus threw in for good measure a fair amount of acreage to help with the construction of our early public buildings and internal improvements.

The geographer in me was curious to know the distribution of these numerous gifts of terra firma across Michigan’s two peninsulas. Working primarily from tract books on deposit at the State Archives of Michigan, I spent a number of years of my own time mapping out each individual land grant. Every type of property award was assigned a different identifying color (accounting for the many tonal variations) and accuracy of depiction was to the section (or one square mile).

The results of this cartographic exercise are displayed below in a greatly reduced form. The picture presented by these maps shows the degree to which our state and national governments have been goodhearted in transferring substantial pieces of our territorial heritage to those persons or corporations deemed worthy of compensation.

It is common today to hear people complain about how many tax dollars we are annually required to send to the treasury departments in Lansing and Washington DC. Hopefully, these two delineations will also help us appreciate how many blessings we (or our ancestors) have received from state and federal governments over the years. —Le Roy Barnett

Click a segment of the map to view a larger, more detailed image. View listing by county name.

In order to maximize size and visibility, the peninsulas are not to scale or geographically placed in accordance to each other.