Library Guides: HIST 302: Environmental Justice: Maps

Sanborn Maps

Digitized Pennsylvania Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps
Detailed maps of populated places in Pennsylvania from mid 1880s through early 1920s.
Sanborn Library Guide
Guide with more information about Sanborn maps from other states or help finding maps that are not available online.
Using Sanborn maps to track changes in State College
This is the result of a project with student interns to use Sanborn maps to look at the building history of State College and Penn State.

Proquest Digital Sanborn Maps This link opens in a new window
This database has Sanborn Fire Insurance maps from 13 large cities in the US including: Baltimore, MD; Boston, MA; Charlotte, NC; Chicago, IL; Detroit, MI; Los Angeles, CA; Miami, FL; New York City, NY; Newark, NJ; Philadelphia, PA; Richmond, VA; Seattle, WA; Washington, DC.
Provides digital access to thousands of large-scale maps of American towns and cities, searchable by address and GPS coordinates. Sanborn® fire insurance maps are the most frequently consulted maps in libraries. The maps chart the growth and development of thousands of America towns and cities across a century. Because of this scope, urban specialists, social historians, architects, geographers, genealogists, local historians, and others will find the maps a valuable tool. ProQuest® Sanborn Maps Geo Edition™ allows for increased discovery and greater ease of use by making maps searchable by address and location. Examining temporal (time) changes is made even easier with tools that layer maps from different years on top of each other and over modern street, satellite, and hybrid layers via a Google™ map interface.

Agriculture and Migrant workers

Potter County Potato and Cannery Crop Farming, 1850-1960 report
Historical information about farming in Potter County, including maps, pictures of farms, and information on migrant workers.
Pennsylvania Federation of Labor Records, 1913-1965 (bulk 1940-1960)
Contains documents from the Migrant Labor Committee, 1952, 1958-1961;

Indian land transfers in the United States (maps)

Maps of the Indian land transfers (1899)
Map of Indian land transfers from the Smithsonian Institution. Bureau of American Ethnology. Eighteenth annual report ... 1896-'97. pt. 2, p. 521-997, 67 maps
Text to Indian land transfer maps
After looking at a map from the above, find the number of the land cession and then use this book to see the details of the land transfer.

Historic maps

OldMapsOnline
Search by geographic area and or time frame to find scanned historic maps from many different sources.
Library of Congress - Maps
Search the largest map collection in the country and one of the largest in the world.
Maps & Atlases in Ancestry.com (authentication required)
Use Ancestry.com to view maps and atlases.

Red Line Maps

Interactive RedLine maps
Mapping Inequality introduces viewer to the records of the Home Owners' Loan Corporation on a scale that is unprecedented. Here you can browse more than 150 interactive maps and thousands of "area descriptions." These materials afford an extraordinary view of the contours of wealth and racial inequality in Depression-era American cities and insights into discriminatory policies and practices that so profoundly shaped cities that we feel their legacy to this day.
JM Brewster's Redline map of Philadelphia (1934)
This map of Philadelphia was created by J.M. Brewer in 1934. Brewer had a company called Property Services, Inc. that provided information about real estate conditions, presumably to local lenders, realtors, and appraisers.
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There are no records about the method Brewer used to collect the data other than the note at the bottom of the map legend: "All location ratings and racial concentration quotes are the opinion only of J.M. Brewer after careful investigation of the location." Brewer served at one time as chief appraiser in Philadelphia for the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. Met Life was among the biggest mortgage lenders in Philadelphia during the 1940s. Brewer also served as a map consultant to Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC) and helped create the 1937 security map for Philadelphia. No doubt Brewer used this 1934 map and the data collected to create it in his work with HOLC. This map provides evidence that people outside of the federal government were making maps similar to the ones created by the HOLC even before HOLC began its City Survey in 1935.

Aerial Photographs and Topographic maps

Pennsylvania Imagery Navigator
Aerial photos and other remote sensing data from late 1930s through 2017. Use this address to find Centralia, PA - 200-318 Park St, 17921
Topographic maps
Download topographic maps from late 1880s through today

Centralia, Denora, Johnstown

Centralia mine fire map
Fire origin and burn zones in 1989 and 2012.
Donora (1901)
Birds-eye-view

Donora aerial photograph (1938)
Notice the plumes of smoke on this aerial photograph. USDA Farm Service. Retrieved from http://maps.psiee.psu.edu/ImageryNavigator/
Donora aerial photograph (1956)
Notice there are no plumes of smog. USDA Farm Service. Retrieved from http://maps.psiee.psu.edu/ImageryNavigator/

Johnstown (1889)
Bird's-eye view of the Conemaugh Valley from Nineveh to the lake, Johnstown, Pa. : from personal sketches and surveys of the Pennsylvania R.R.
Johnstown before flood (1889)
Topographic Map of the Conemaugh Valley, published in June 1889 in Harper's Weekly magazine. Conemaugh Lake in the east was the result of damming South Fork Creek. When the South Fork dam failed on May 31, 1889, the flood wave rushed down the Conemaugh River valley.
Johnstown Flood National Memorial, National Park Service
Text, map of central Johnstown showing flood paths, view of dam, and illustrations.
Johnstown Flood path (1889)
From Caldwell's Illustrated Historical Atlas of Cambria County.

Johnstown Flood path
One of three images from Caldwell's atlas showing the flood path through Johnstown, The flooded district is hand colored in blue.

Caldwell's Atlas of Cambria County (1890)
Contains an account of the flood, death register, photos and fold out maps. You can view this item in person in Special Collections using call number G1263.C3I5 1890 F

Penn State University Libraries

HIST 302: Environmental Justice

Map Specialist

Sanborn Maps

Agriculture and Migrant workers

Indian land transfers in the United States (maps)

Historic maps

Red Line Maps

Aerial Photographs and Topographic maps

Centralia, Denora, Johnstown