Lewis and Clark , 1814 of Lewis and Clark ’ s Track , Across the Western Portion of North America from the Mississippi to the Pacific Ocean ; By Order of the Executive of the United States , in 1804 , 5 & 6 . Copied by Samuel Lewis from the Original Drawing of Wm . Clark .” Although the expedition had returned in 1806 , the map was not published until 1814 .
In 1848 , Congress created Oregon Territory , which included today ’ s Washington and Idaho and sprawled east to the Rocky Mountains . In 1852 , the soldier , artist , and cartographer Seth Eastman drew a “ Map of Oregon , showing the location of Indian Tribes .” More recent maps agree with Eastman ’ s anthropology in some details and disagree in many others , and despite his fame as a cartographer , he got some details wrong . In reality , the Olympic Mountains fill the Olympic Peninsula in a circular shape , but
Eastman shows them as a long , thin range running down the middle — and the shapes of Flathead Lake , Lake Coeur d ’ Alene , and Lake Pend Oreille are unrecognizable .
Washington and Oregon did not become separate territories until 1853 , when a group of farmers living north of Astoria persuaded Congress to let the territory north of the Columbia River secede . A map made the next year shows the new boundaries of the state , which were the same on the north and south as they are today but still extended to the Rockies . In 1863 , the new territory of Idaho was established , which then included all of today ’ s Montana and nearly all of Wyoming . It was not until 1868 that the borders of Idaho , Montana , and Wyoming took on their present shapes .
By the latter half of the nineteenth century , every acre of the Pacific Northwest was charted , and published in intricate maps by
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