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Posted by: Amelia Raines
Growing up in Michigan, I was a lake enthusiast from a young age, and extremely proud that my home state was surrounded by North America’s most important inland bodies of water. These are, of course, the Great Lakes, so called because of their size – according to the 2020 National Geographic Atlas of the World, …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, 20th century cartography, African History, American History, Physical Geography
Posted by: Tim St. Onge
There are some maps that, at first look (or second, or one-hundredth), seem to offer more questions than answers. It can surely be said that the map of nationalities in New York City, part of a series of maps from the Tenement House Committee of 1894, is one such curiosity. Looking closer at its historical …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, City Histories
Posted by: Sonia Kahn
Many of us have heard the tale of Mrs. O’Leary’s infamous cow as the driver of one of Chicago’s greatest disasters. Whether or not the beast did in fact start the blaze may never be known, but the fact remains that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 decimated the city over a three day period …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, City Histories
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 …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Amelia Raines
Old maps are fantastic windows into history. If you want to know what the world was like 100, 200, or 500 years ago, you can look at a map published at that time and see where borders were located, what places were named, and what the land looked like (at least, to the degree of …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, Borders
Posted by: Julie Stoner
This is a guest post by Britt Long, Detailed Reference Librarian in the Geography and Map Division. Since the founding of the United States of America, our country has been in the import and export business. We have bartered and traded goods across land and sea, developing systems of transportation that are both innovative and …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History, Guest Posts
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. …
Posted in: 20th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Meagan Snow
Flow maps are characterized by representing direction and amount of movement between an origin and a destination – and Charles Joseph Minard is widely regarded as the first cartographer who mastered the art of the flow map. He is best known for his flow map of Napolean’s 1812 invasion of Russia titled “Carte figurative des …
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History
Posted by: Mike Klein
In September 1821 a Connecticut educator by the name of William Channing Woodbridge introduced his "Moral and Political Chart of the Inhabited World," classifying the earth's inhabitants by cultural hierarchies.
Posted in: 19th century cartography, American History