1944 Harold Fisk Mississippi River Floodplain Plate #9

This 36" x 52" map - Plate 22 Page 9 in Harold Fisk's 1944 series on the 'Ancient Courses of the Mississippi River Meander Belt' - is a landform map so visually arresting that it is hard to believe it isn't a famous work of art. The map is part of a set of 15 'maps' which show the modern and ancient channels of the Lower Mississippi River from Missouri all the way to southern Louisiana. (And part of a larger report to the US Army Corps of Engineers titled 'Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River.')

The result of years of painstaking work by Fisk while a professor at Louisiana State University, this map is beautifully detailed and yet so visually clear that the viewer intuitively perceives both the map's subject and what it reveals about natural systems and our perception of time. Not coincidentally, it was the map that inspired UnConformity's founder to create a company dedicated to uncovering and sharing beautiful, largely forgotten works of cartographic art.

While all 15 of Fisk's Mississippi River maps are incredible, this one stands out for the complexity of the ancient channels, oxbows, abandoned meanders, and cutoffs, the rich colors, and the added benefit that it includes a legend of the meander channel ages. The map extends from about Greenville to Meyersville, Mississippi, with southeast Alabama and northeast Louisiana on the west bank of the River. 

We have reproduced Fisk's map on Arches BFK Rives 100% Cotton Rag paper, handmade at the Blanchet Frères & Kléber paper mill in Rives, France on a traditional cylinder paper mould. The rich, random texture of the paper fibers gives an elegant, luxurious appearance to the whole map without sacrificing the readability of the remarkably fine details.  

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