A Unique Perspective – Unusual Topographic Maps in the Collections

The collections of the Geography and Map Division has hundreds of thousands of topographic map sheets in its collections. A topographic map, or relief map, shows the terrain of a given area and the changes in elevation, usually depicted by contour lines and shading. Many topographic maps have been systemically made by governments around the world. For example, the United States Geologic Survey has produced topographic maps covering the entire country at various scales for many years, all of which have been digitized and made available on their search tool, TopoView. While topographic maps are fairly common, throughout my years in the division, I have found some rather unusual examples of this map genre, a few of which I will highlight here!

First we have one of my favorite topographic maps in the collection, a rendering of the area around Sky Farm in Woodstock, New Hampshire in 1981. The map has 3D profiles of the elevations that spring up on top of a topographic map of the region. The map is part of a collection of 1,150 maps donated in 1983 by Mylon Merriam, a cartographer for the Army Mapping Service from 1943-1972, as well as an avid map collector. He helped pioneer techniques to convert aerial photographs into map images and was the inventor of several optical images and map-making techniques, such as the pictochrome map. According to the documentation accompanying this map,

“The Profile map is a flat-folding, flat-printed, 3D Terrain Model, consisting of parallel profile sections mounted at parallel, equal-spaced intervals, on a topographic map, designed to provide five to ten times more space for recording military geographic information in addition to the topographic map information, to the same scale as the topographic map, and without enlarging the space covered by the topographic map.”

For all of us who loved pop-up books as children, this is a fun map to explore!

Next up is a physical model of the topography of the continental United States made by Dr. Michael Bailey and Dru Clark. It was produced on a computer-driven Laminated Object Manufacturing machine at the University of California, San Diego campus in 1998. The caption also tells us that it was created from layers of paper, each cut with a laser and heat-laminated to the layers beneath it. The contour lines result from the laser creating scorched brown edge wherever it cuts the white paper! At the bottom of the map, you can see the paper layering in the cross section. One inch of height in the model is equivalent to 10,000 feet of real elevation with each contour line representing an elevation change of about 45 feet.

Another relief model that falls into our unusual topographic map category is the map of northern Los Angeles seen below, combining terrain modeling with satellite imagery. Sitting in the division lobby area, and at 8 feet by 4 feet, this is one of the larger terrain models we have in the collection. An explanatory sign accompanying the map tells us that the model shows an area 40.5 miles by 81 miles and “illustrates the global terrain mapping capabilities now provided by orbiting spacecraft.” The elevation data was obtained from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) that flew onboard the space shuttle Endeavor during an eleven-day mission in February 2000. To acquire this topographic data, the SRTM payload was outfitted with two radar antenna, one attached to the shuttle payload bay while the other antenna was attached to the end of a 60 meter boom or mast that extended out from the payload bay. The shuttle was flown upside down and tail first to collect the data for the simultaneous radar observations. With its radars sweeping the Earth’s land surfaces, SRTM produced the world’s first near global, high-resolution topographic database.

This model was made by Solid Terrain Modeling which used the SRTM data to control its cutting and printing machines, cutting into high-density polyurethane foam. The image of the city was obtained from a Landsat-7 satellite from 2011 and was then printed directly onto the model. This model can be found in the lobby of the Geography and Map Division. Walking past it every day, I sometimes forget how amazing this piece of artwork really is.

Nearing the end of our tour of unusual topographic maps, we come to this map of the Crown Prince Islands in Disko Bay, Greenland. A colleague wrote a blog post about this map several years ago, Mapping Disko Bay. As discussed in her post, in 1925, Silas Sandgreen was commissioned by the Library of Congress to create a map of Disko Bay, Greenland. This is a large bay located on the western coast of Greenland, along the southeastern side of Baffin Bay. The southern coastline of the bay has multiple waterways flowing into the bay and many small islands while to the north lies the largest island, Disko Island, on the western coast of Greenland.

This commissioned effort was created with sealskin and driftwood. Individual islands were whittled from Siberian driftwood. The wood was then sewn onto the sealskin. Next, the sealskin was painted. Yellow on the islands represents grassy and swampy land; blue indicates lakes; black shows the extent of country covered with black lichens. Tidal areas are left uncolored. Reefs are demarked by pencil. The map encompasses an area of approximately 70 square miles at a scale of 1 in to 1,760 feet and is a wonderful representation of indigenous mapping in Greenland.

As we wrap up our topographic highlights, I can’t end without a last fan favorite that is requested a lot on tours of the division. We don’t know much about the map featured below or the background of the company, but the medium is unmistakable, chocolate! Made by the Chocolate Topographic Company in 1991, this topographic chocolate masterpiece is of the Grand Canyon with all its ridges and valleys.

While this post can only show a small portion of our topographic collection, you are always welcome to view these maps and others in person in our reading room. There is always something worth seeing in our world of maps!

Learn More:

• Learn about topographic mapping and its historical significance from the United States Geologic Service
• Read about the Disko Bay map on Worlds Revealed
• Interested in the topography outside of Earth? Check out these blog posts about early topographic mapping of the Moon and Venus!