The earliest detailed map of any part of this state was drafted during the building of the fort, in 1823, titled "A Topographical View of the Site of Fort St. Anthony," as described in the historical paper before cited. Lakes Harriet and Calhoun and the Lake of the Isles, in the series at the west side of Minneapolis, are there mapped and named, with numerous others of the lakes, rivers, and creeks, in the contiguous parts of Hennepin, Ramsey, and Dakota Counties. The region east of the Mississippi River was designated as Michigan and that on the west as Missouri.

Lake Calhoun commemorates John Caldwell Calhoun (1782-1850), the eminent statesman of South Carolina, who was secretary of war, 1817-25. He was vice-president of the United States, 1825-32; was U.S. senator, 1833-43; and was secretary of state under President Tyler, 1844-45, when he was again elected to the Senate, of which he remained a member until his death. The Dakota name of this lake is given as "Mde Medoza, Lake of the Loons," by Maj. T. M. Newson in his "Indian Legends of Minnesota Lakes" (no. 1, 1881, p. 18).

This map, on the scale of two inches to a mile, is limited to the reservation area, reaching west to the Lake of the Woods (now called Wood Lake), the series of Harriet, Calhoun, and the Lake of the Isles, and northwest to the lower part of Nine Mile Creek (now Bassett's Creek). On the east the reservation was bounded by the middle of the channel of the Mississippi to the island next below the present Meeker Island. From the upper end of that island, the boundary on the north side of the part of the reservation east and north of the Mississippi extended due east 5 miles, to a point near the intersection of St. Peter and Tenth Streets in the city of St. Paul. Next it extended due south 2 miles and 10 chains, crossing the Mississippi just west of the upper end of Harriet Island, to a point near the present corner of Annapolis Street and Manomin Avenue in West St. Paul. Thence the southeastern boundary of the reservation ran 8 miles and 42 chains southwestward, nearly in parallelism with the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers and about a mile distant from them. Finally the most southern line of this area ran due west 1 mile and 75 chains, to the Minnesota River at the place of beginning, about 6 miles distant from the fort.

On the reservation map of 1839, "Land's End" is a part of the bluff on the northwest side of the Minnesota River, nearly two miles southwest from the fort, where the bluff is intersected by a tributary ravine; Minnehaha Falls and Creek were called Brown's Falls and Brown's Creek; an "Indian Village" adjoined the southeast shore of Lake Calhoun; and the "Mission," with three cultivated fields, comprising probably 30 acres, was on the northwest side of Lake Harriet.