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Archive: 2021 (46 Posts)

Detailed map of the Andersonville prison stockade with descriptive text and measurements

The Maps of Andersonville Prison

Posted by: Meagan Snow

Andersonville Prison, arguably the most horrific Confederate prison for Union soldiers, was constructed in 1864 during the US Civil War and was located a little over a hundred miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. The prison was constructed as an open-air stockade with walls made of pine logs at least fifteen feet high. During its fourteen …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Finding John Huston’s Feathers

Posted by: John Hessler

This post is part of the series Excavating Archaeology, which features selections from, and research on, the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology & History of the Early Americas and related collections, housed in the Geography and Map Division and in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. Nature …

Route map showing the lines and stops of the Gospel Temperance Railraod

Fast-Track to Destruction City Aboard the Gospel Temperance Railroad

Posted by: Meagan Snow

Though much of the history of cartography involves map-makers striving to capture the world in increasingly accurate scientific detail, sometimes the domain of the map-maker is to capture the plane of imagined, metaphorical, allegorical, or even spiritual.  Such is the journey you’ll take on the “Gospel Temperance Railroad,” a 1908 map creation by George E. …

1881 topographic map of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, and its environs.

Now You See It, Now You Don’t

Posted by: Mike Klein

Evening settled over the Bohemian community of Lidice on June 9, 1942, probably as it had for centuries, that is, without incident. So insignificant was the village, at least from our point of view, that one could hardly distinguish it from hundreds of others in its general vicinity, if the large-scale map from the late …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Summer Reading Projects or How to Become Levi-Strauss

Posted by: John Hessler

This post is part of the series Excavating Archaeology, which features selections from, and research on, the Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology & History of the Early Americas and related collections, housed in the Geography and Map Division and in the Rare Book & Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress. Writing …