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1938 Map of Alma

Name: 1938 Topographic Map of Alma
Creator: U.S. Geological Survey
Published: 1938
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

USGS Topo · Published 1938

About this map

The Pine River anchors this 1930s landscape of Gratiot County, flowing through the primary hubs of Alma and St Louis. This period finds the region defined by its agricultural grid and an exceptionally dense network of rural one-room schoolhouses, such as Cohoon Sch, Hanley Sch, and Welling Sch, spaced for walking distances before the era of school consolidation. The industrial and transit pulse is set by the intersecting lines of the Pere Marquette and Ann Arbor railroads, which facilitated the movement of goods between these mid-Michigan towns.

Further south, the county seat of Ithaca stands as a significant crossroads, bordered by the County Home and the rural community of Eugene. The terrain is extensively managed through a complex system of agricultural drainage, including the Newark and Arcadia Drain and Taylor Drain, which converted the natural wetlands into productive farmland. This survey captures a specific social geography where family-named landmarks and local burial grounds like Wright Cem and Pritchard Cem denote the deep-rooted settlement patterns of the early twentieth century.