Isle Royale Lake Superior Nautical Chart, 1891

The story of this map

Isle Royale sits in the north-west corner of Lake Superior, forty-five miles long, closer to Canada than to Michigan, and in 1891 it belonged to copper prospectors, commercial fishermen and the lake steamers that called at its harbours. The US Lake Survey charted it that year with the whole north-west coast of Superior from Grand Portage to Thunder Bay — hachured ridges, soundings, the lights corrected “from information received to August 23, 1891” — and added three harbour insets at 1:30,000: Todd Harbor, Rock Harbor through the Middle Islands Passage, and Washington and Grace Harbors at the island’s western end.

Those are the harbours the national park’s boats use today, which is why this sheet has a second life on the walls of people who have paddled the island. It is an unusually handsome chart: the engraving of the ridges gives the island a physical presence most charts lack, and the insets make a composition of it.

Restored from the Leventhal Map Center’s scan; the paper tone and the survey’s stamps and notes are kept. Pairs with the Lake Huron general chart of 1893 for a Great Lakes wall.

Before and after

Left: the archive scan exactly as published. Right: the file that goes to the printer.

Archive scanRestored

Restoration notes

Restoration: trimmed the scanner margins, balanced levels while keeping the paper tone (65% of the original colour retained), removed dust and specks, applied gentle sharpening. Stamps, tipped-on notices and the wear of a used chart are kept where they belong to the object; nothing is redrawn.

Every print carries its archive credit on the packing slip. Paper tone and small imperfections of the original are kept on purpose; nothing is redrawn.