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Posted by: Meagan Snow
In the early 20th century, most of America’s rural roads were constructed of gravel or dirt, causing slow travel and muddy roads. As new modes of transportation blossomed in cities – cars, bicycles, trolleys, and paved streets – a political movement called the Good Roads Movement aimed to connect rural areas with local cities via …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
The end of the 19th century saw a rise in the proliferation of data visualizations alongside traditional cartography and thematic mapping. A terrific example of this type of work is Scribner’s Statistical Atlas of the United States, which “shows by graphic methods [the states’] present condition and their political, social, and industrial development.” The atlas …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, Big Data and Visualization
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Happy GIS Day from the Library of Congress! Today the Library celebrates GIS Day with a virtual event exploring the role of GIS in addressing humanitarian disasters. Today’s event aims to highlight the role that geospatial data and GIS technologies can play in creating positive change in the face of global humanitarian challenges. Geography …
Posted in: Geographic Information Science
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Many things unite humankind across the centuries, but chief among them is the great eternal question: what time can I expect the mail today? In today’s world, we’ve become accustomed to our new-found ability to track packages on our phones as they move toward us in real-time. Let’s take a look back in time to …
Posted in: 17th century cartography, 19th century cartography
Posted by: Meagan Snow
In mid-19th Century America, an expanding nation had a major transportation need: rail lines that could stretch from coast to coast. Western explorations and survey crews began to sketch out potential railroad routes in the decades before the American Civil War. Lloyd’s American railroad map of the US, seen below, shows three proposed rail routes: …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
When Prohibition became law across the United States in 1920, legitimate businesses were no longer allowed to serve alcohol, paving the way for illegal speakeasies and related underground businesses. In Chicago, this meant that criminals like Al Capone and Johnny Torrio fought for control of illegal alcohol distribution within the city, sparking an infamous decade …
Posted in: 20th century cartography
Posted by: Meagan Snow
John Bachmann, a Swiss born lithographer, moved to the United States shortly after 1848, and went on to produce a series of bird’s eye maps that depict American landscapes in ways that were groundbreaking around the mid-nineteenth century. His work blurred the line between cartography and fine art, and his landscape prints are held by …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Maps can tell us all kinds of things about how others have viewed and shaped the world – from the borders of ancient empires to the layout of your neighborhood street grid. Today, spatial data commonly powers the maps and applications we use to access basic information about the places we inhabit: opening an app …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 21st century cartography, City Histories, Geographic Information Science