Loading map...

1918 Map of Brainerd

Name: 1918 Topographic Map of Brainerd
Creator: U.S. Geological Survey
Published: 1944
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

USGS Topo · Published 1944

About this map

Brainerd serves as the central hub of this Crow Wing County survey, situated at a major bend in the Mississippi River. The landscape is dominated by an intricate network of glacial lakes and wetlands, including Lake Edward to the north and the elongated Long Lake to the south. The era's transportation infrastructure is clearly defined by the Northern Pacific and Minnesota International rail lines, which facilitated the region's early 20th-century development.

Beyond the primary settlement, the map reveals a dense rural fabric composed of numerous one-room schoolhouses, such as School No 35 and School No 80, and smaller communities like Riverton and Merrifield. This distribution of schools every few miles illustrates the localized nature of social and educational life before the consolidation of rural districts. The survey also identifies family-named water bodies like Sorensen Lake and Campbell Lake, providing valuable data for tracing local land use and genealogy.