This map provides a loose sketch of the Little Missouri River Basin, with a focus on the tributary streams that flow into the Little Missouri, and the ranches in the area. Ambiguity about the map's authorship, date of creation, and scale--not to mention its unspecific, almost abstract, depiction of space--calls into question this map's reliability as a source of verifiable information. For instance, the way that each stream or creek is drawn almost identically, with two forks each, makes viewers wonder how accurate this map really is. Indeed, satellite imagery of the same area of the Little Missouri confirms that the map's depiction of streams is not faithful to the actual topography of the land. This inaccuracy does not mean, however, that the source surrenders all of its value. After all, the map's purported purpose is to show ranches, not natural features. In light of this stated goal, the streams may have been represented more for their position relative to ranches and each other than for topographic accuracy.
Even so, the value of the depiction of ranches is reduced by the lack of a date on the map. Though the map purports to show ranches in the '80s, assumed to mean the 1880s, the period in which Roosevelt came to the Little Missouri, there is reason to question how accurately this map represents 1880s ranches. For one, another map in this collection, also courtesy of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, shows far fewer ranches in the same area than this map shows. Furthermore, the inaccuracy of the rivers makes one wonder if the ranches are placed on the page with a similar disregard.
In spite of these shortcomings, the map provides some value in that it shows how ranches in the area were clustered along the Little Missouri. Also, by centering the map on Medora, the map-maker highlights the importance of that town as a transportation hub at the geographic center of the Little Missouri Basin ranching boom in the 1880s. Medora, of course, was the town that connected the region to the Northern Pacific, which transported cattle and people to and from all points East.