Monday, August 13, 2007

Historic STL Area Maps?

With the STL area so rich in history, there are countless possibilities to enjoy scenic, historic drives through our region.

A great resource for planning such road trips would be a map of historic St. Louis, one showing the old roads still in use connecting the settlements of early St. Louis, say dating back from 1910 or so.

Has anyone ever seen such a map? I'm thinking of something that would provide roughly a fifty mile radius from the Arch.

3 comments:

GMichaud said...

There are plenty of maps on ebay of St. Louis, although usually they are of the city only or of the State of Missouri, especially at that early date. The fifty mile distance from the arch is hard. Still you should be able to find something, especially if you are patient and look over a period of time. I do have Quad maps for most of the state of Missouri, but they are different dates and I'm not sure they are as early as 1910. (I don't have them handy to check right now) Early quad maps would in general probably be your best bet with their tremendous historic detail, the problem is you need a number of them to create a fifty mile radius from the arch. Alternately there is the David Rumsey map collection in which you can purchase reproductions of early maps.
http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps3231.html

Anonymous said...

You can buy many such maps online, but I would also note that a trip to the Missouri Historical Society Library on Skinker would also do the trick. Maps from the 1900 period are pretty common.

Amy in StL said...

Try Google Earth. Specifically try some of the stuff available from the hack sites. You'll find a lot of historic maps have been uploaded and ortho-rectified. I know they have a 1910 st. louis map but it only goes about 10 miles out.