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Maps — North Liberty
North Liberty enters cartography late and small: no French river map names it, because no river runs through it. Its map history begins with the surveyor's chain on the prairie in the 1830s, runs through the county-map and atlas trade that every St. Joseph County town shared, peaks — measurably — in three Sanborn fire-insurance surveys, and ends, for now, on the county's GIS screen, where the 1837 plat's lots are still the parcels people buy.
Before the town: imperial maps and the survey
1600s–1830s · the Kankakee and the St. Joseph country
The imperial-map class prints as a tested negative at town frame and a positive at county frame. French and British sheets of the St. Joseph–Kankakee country (the floor's 1679–1763 range for the valley) map the rivers, the…
The plat: the town as a map first, in two years
1836 or 1837 · Daniel and James P. Antrim
North Liberty's first map is its plat, and its date is the build's standing conflict: Howard (1907) carries the laying-out to 1836, Chapman (1880) to 1837, and the town's 2015 comprehensive plan prints both, crediting Daniel…
The county maps and the atlas trade
1863–1895 and the subscription atlases
The first county-map class is documented for this ground by the maps the Cole tracing actually used: an 1863 St. Joseph County map showing Cole family land south of town, and an 1895 county map showing Cole property just south of…
The bird's-eye test: no panoramic view found
Tested
The panoramic-view class prints as a negative in the Mishawaka form. No bird's-eye or panoramic view of North Liberty — of the Ruger type that drew South Bend in 1866 — was found in the Library of Congress panoramic-map collection, the state library's map lists or any local source read. A town of a few hundred people, off the main river and (until 1893) off any railroad, was below the panoramic trade's market. The 1875 atlas's drawn view of the manufacturing works is the closest object, and it is a business illustration, not a town view; the leg prints it as such and does not promote it.
The Sanborn run, measured: 1909, 1917, 1929
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps · Library of Congress / Indiana State Library
North Liberty's Sanborn run is short, complete and exactly dated: three surveys — 1909, 1917 and 1929 — listed identically by the Indiana State Library's Sanborn list for St. Joseph County and by the Library of Congress, which…
Roads, topographic sheets, and the photographic map
1900s–2026 · SR 23 and SR 4; USGS quadrangles; aerials and GIS
The travelers' map class runs on the two state roads that cross at the town: SR 23, which is Main Street through the historic district, and SR 4, which serves the town and the state park entrance at 25601 State Road 4. State…