FUN WITH MAPS – ISSUE 2023-169 DAILY FEATURE:

By Steve Kovacs (Introduction by Chuck Gibson)

LOVELAND, OH (October 23, 2023) – Intended for publication Friday, October 20, today’s edition of Fun with Maps offers details of a big deal.

JEFFERSON’S BIG DEAL

Today is the 220th anniversary of the US ratifying the Louisiana Purchase, giving the country control of the western half of the Mississippi River basin and doubling the size of the United States.

With the Mississippi River as the eastern border and the Rocky Mountains as the western one, the area eventually became the states of Louisiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, as well as including much of the states of Kansas, Colorado, Minnesota, Wyoming, and Montana.

The agreed-upon price of $23.3 million ($523.3 million in 2021 valuation), including the cost of floating bonds, etc., came out to a bargain cost of less than 3 cents per acre.

St. Louis, Missouri earned its nickname of the Gateway to the West when the documents finalizing the transfer were signed there on March 10, 1804.

Captain Meriwether Lewis and Captain William Clark, also using St. Louis as a historic beginning point, led the expeditions that mapped most of the territory.

The key city of the Louisiana Purchase in the early 1800s wasn’t St. Louis, rather the port city of New Orleans which controlled much of the commerce on the Mississippi River.  Myra Barnes created this iconic pictorial map of New Orleans in 1942.   

Steve Kovacs and his wife Theresa reside in Loveland, Ohio where they raised their two children. He is a passionate collector of antique maps.

Visit his antique map boutique world-on-paper online. Watch for his daily feature Steve Kovacs: Fun with Maps here on Loveland Beacon.