Trygg Land Office Online

Trygg Historical Maps – compiled from Original survey data & other documentary sources. A total of 46 maps cover all of Minnesota, parts of Wisconsin, Michigan & Iowa (Minnesota is covered by 23 maps).

PRICE: $6.00 each **
** Availability of maps is limited. MN 1/WI 5a; MN 2; MN 3; MN 4; MN 5; MN 6 & MN 10 are out of print, but are available by color photocopies (1 map is covered by 2 photocopies) for $6.00/map

MAILING CHARGE: 5 maps or less $5.00; 10 maps or less $7.00; 11-23 maps $8.00; All 46 maps $9.00

SALES TAX: Minnesota residents please add 6½% sales tax to total for merchandise & mailing charge.

Please take a look here for an index of maps. Contact us by phone or email with any questions. Orders must be paid in advance by check or money order & sent to Trygg Land Office, P.O. Box 628, Ely, MN 55731. Click here for a printable Order Form.

These maps were developed by J. William Trygg as a result of his employment as an appraiser for several Indian Tribes in their suits against the United States for adjustments of the amounts paid them for their lands when ceded to the government. The lands were valued as of the date of the cession and were not surveyed until after the cession, but before development was legally permitted. Inasmuch as the surveyors were required to furnish a plat (map) of each 6-mile square township with the section lines run in a grid at 1-mile intervals along with a written record describing the areas as they passed over it, their records were the prime source of information for preparing the Composite Maps.

The instructions to the Land Surveyors are as follow:

"Your field notes are to form a full and perfect history of your operations in the field. You are to enter in their proper places in the field notes of your survey, a particular description and the exact location of the following objects:--

1. The length and variation or variations of every line you run.

2. The name and diameter of all bearing trees, with the course and distance of the same from their respective corners.

3. The name of the material from which you construct mounds, with the course and distance to the pits.

4. The name, diameter and exact distance to all those trees which your lines intersect.

5. At what distance you enter, and at what distance you leave every river, creek or other "bottom", prairie, swamp, marsh, grove or windfall, with the course of the same at both points of intersection.

6. The surface, whether level, rolling, broken or hilly.

7. The soil, whether first, second, or third rate.

8. The several kinds of timber and undergrowth, naming the timber in the order of its prevalence.

9. All rivers, creeks and smaller streams of water, with their actual or right angled widths, course, banks, current and bed, at the points where your lines cross.

10. A description of all bottom lands--whether wet or dry, and if subject to inundation, state to what depth.

11. All springs of water, and whether fresh, saline or mineral, with course and width of the stream flowing from them.

12. All lakes and ponds, describing their banks and the depth and quality of their water.

13. All coal banks, precipes, caves, sink holes, quarries and ledges with the character and quality of the same.

14. All water-falls and mill sites.

15. All towns and villages, houses, cabins, fields and sugar camps, factories, furnaces and other improvements.

16. All metalliferous minerals or ores, and all diggings therefore, with particular descriptions of both, that may come to your knowledge, whether intersected by your lines or not.

17. All roads and trails, with the courses they bear .

18. All offsets or calculations by which you obtain the length of such parts of your lines as cannot be measured with the chain.

19. The precise course and distance of all witness corners from the true corners which they represent."

1-218-365-5177

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P.O. Box 628 Ely, MN 55731
tel:218-365-5177 or 218-365-4668