Library Guides: HIST 302: New Histories of the Old South: 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
Provides digital access to thousands of large-scale maps of American towns and cities, searchable by address and GPS coordinates.
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.

Sanborn Maps at the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress has the largest collection of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, but not all are scanned. Contact the Center for the Libraries' Maps & GIS for assistance finding other maps.

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.
David Rumsey Map Collection
Digitized collection of maps from the map collector, David Rumsey.
Civil War maps in Library of Congress
Maps relating to the Civil War in the Library of Congress.

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

Penn State University Libraries

HIST 302: New Histories of the Old South

Map Specialist

Sanborn Maps

Indian land transfers in the United States (maps)

Historic maps

Red Line Maps

Aerial Photographs and Topographic maps