Home > Collection > Map Collection > First Printed Map in Detroit Map Collection - First Printed Map of Detroit The map which serves as a backdrop for this home page is the first printed map of Detroit. Entitled "La Riviere du Detroit" it is from Jacques Nicolas Bellin's (1703-72) Le petit atlas maritime published in Paris in 1764. The map is based on two manuscript maps of Joseph Gaspard Chaussegros de Lery (1721-1797). "Plan du Fort Detroit" (1749) and "La Riviere du Detroit" (1752). De Lery's maps show the ribbon farms along both sides of the Detroit River, the location of the fort, and various streets and buildings within the fort's walls. His "La Riviere du Detroit" is in the Service Hydrographique in Paris and includes a listing of the fifty two proprietors of the ribbon farms. By the time Bellin published this map, France had lost all of Canada, including Fort Ponchartrain, as Detroit was then known, to the British, and in October of 1763 Pontiac's (1720?-1769) futile five month siege of Detroit had ended. This map has been scanned from a facsimile. Sources: Adams, Randolf G., Iconography of Old Detroit 1942. (Re-printed from Studies in the History of Culture .) Karpinski, Louis, C. Bibliography of the Printed Maps of Michigan. Michigan Historical Commission, Lansing, Michigan, 1931.