Colonel Lawrence Martin, Chief of the Maps Division at the Library of Congress, inspected the maps at the Clements Library on his way to Wisconsin to resolve a dispute about the state line between the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Wisconsin. Martin had a strong reputation as an expert witness in boundary disputes, having served as a consultant in Europe after World War I (including the Austria-Hungary boundary) and in several state disputes in the U.S.
The Wisconsin-Michigan boundary lawsuit, brought before the Supreme Court, concerned the determination of unsurveyed sections of the boundary between northern Wisconsin and the western end of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, in and along the Brule and Menominee Rivers, especially in determining the division of islands and rapids, the latter a source of hydroelectric power. It also considered the state boundary that might affect fishing rights in Green Bay, the part of Lake Michigan, between the Door County peninsula of Wisconsin and the Michigan mainland. The suit was settled by the Supreme Court in 1926 with a newly determined, verbally described boundary.