history news

In 1898, Cuba was in the midst of a bloody war for independence from Spain that had been raging for three years. American public opinion swayed dramatically towards support through the 1890s, especially with American journalists fully embracing Yellow Journalism to exaggerate and embellish the atroc...

Salt River Valley, Arizona, 1934. Cartography by T.A. Hayden. In 1934, the Phoenix valley was mostly farmland thanks to the incredibly successful damming of the Salt River with the Roosevelt Dam via the Salt River Project i...

The Grand Canyon is one of the modern natural wonders of the world. It’s been mapped countless times over the years, and is the second most visited national park in the United States. However, the mapping history of the Grand Canyon is relatively young; the first USGS quadrangle maps of the Canyon w...

One hundred and sixty one years ago, the American Civil War was raging all across the country. During the height of this conflict, The Territory of Arizona was officially established in February of 1863. Efforts to create the Arizona Territory had been ongoing since at least 1856, with a few maps sh...

Our July Map of the Month is this 1934 “National Forests, State Forests, National Parks, National Monuments, and Indian Reservations” by the U.S Department of Agriculture and the U.S Forest Service. This historic map acts as a point of reference to compare how much land in the United States has been...

June 6th, 1944. The largest amphibious invasion ever undertaken is in full swing. Our June Map of the Month was published in commemoration of that historic event- known as D-Day. This map was one in a series of maps published throughout the second world war; the “Dated Events War Map”. Ours in parti...

Our March Map of the Month is this 1880s “City of London Directory Map” by William Hill and Leonard Collinridge. It depicts the rapidly growing metropolis of London in detail, including the city’s wards, important buildings, parks, and its impressive new underground rail system.  ...

Happy New Year! Our January Map of the Month is this map titled “North America Drawn from the Latest and Best Authorities” that is believed to be from the 1780s. It was made by Thomas Kitchin, an English cartographer and engraver, and displays the entirety of the North American continent as had been...

Our November Map of the Month is this 1919 British War Office map titled “Map of Africa to Illustrate the Progress of Surveys and Explorations”. Originally published in 1914 and updated in this edition, it depicts the entirety of the African continent with data on the topographic surveys that had be...