Politics, Science, and Government Mapping Policy in the United States, 1800–1925

The development of a national mapping policy in the United States during the nineteenth century is examined with respect to two factors: the interrelations between federal and state government and contemporary views of the place of science within government. Special attention is paid to the main federal surveys, the U.S. Coast Survey and the U.S. Geological Survey, and to the state surveys with which both were closely associated. The history of the surveys is the history of their struggle for acceptance by both state and federal legislatures. Government programs for geodetic and topographic mapping are found to have been the by-product of ad hoc government legislation, and not the result of policy decisions.