The collections of the Geography and Map Division has hundreds of thousands of topographic map sheets in its collections. A topographic map, or relief map, shows the terrain of a given area and the changes in elevation, usually depicted by contour lines and shading. Many topographic maps have been systemically made by governments around the world. For example, the United States Geologic Survey has produced topographic maps covering the entire country at various scales for many years, all of which have been digitized and made available on their search tool, TopoView. While topographic maps are fairly common, throughout my years in the division, I have found some rather unusual examples of this map genre, a few of which I will highlight here!

First we have one of my favorite topographic maps in the collection, a rendering of the area around Sky Farm in Woodstock, New Hampshire in 1981. The map has 3D profiles of the elevations that spring up on top of a topographic map of the region. The map is part of a collection of 1,150 maps donated in 1983 by Mylon Merriam, a cartographer for the Army Mapping Service from 1943-1972, as well as an avid map collector. He helped pioneer techniques to convert aerial photographs into map images and was the inventor of several optical images and map-making techniques, such as the pictochrome map. According to the documentation accompanying this map,

“The Profile map is a flat-folding, flat-printed, 3D Terrain Model, consisting of parallel profile sections mounted at parallel, equal-spaced intervals, on a topographic map, designed to provide five to ten times more space for recording military geographic information in addition to the topographic map information, to the same scale as the topographic map, and without enlarging the space covered by the topographic map.”

For all of us who loved pop-up books as children, this is a fun map to explore!

Next up is a physical model of the topography of the continental United States made by Dr. Michael Bailey and Dru Clark. It was produced on a computer-driven Laminated Object Manufacturing machine at the University of California, San Diego campus in 1998. The caption also tells us that it was created from layers of paper, each cut with a laser and heat-laminated to the layers beneath it. The contour lines result from the laser creating scorched brown edge wherever it cuts the white paper! At the bottom of the map, you can see the paper layering in the cross section. One inch of height in the model is equivalent to 10,000 feet of real elevation with each contour line representing an elevation change of about 45 feet.

Another relief model that falls into our unusual topographic map category is the map of northern Los Angeles seen below, combining terrain modeling with satellite imagery. Sitting in the division lobby area, and at 8 feet by 4 feet, this is one of the larger terrain models we have in the collection. An explanatory sign accompanying the map tells us that the model shows an area 40.5 miles by 81 miles and “illustrates the global terrain mapping capabilities now provided by orbiting spacecraft.” The elevation data was obtained from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) that flew onboard the space shuttle Endeavor during an eleven-day mission in February 2000. To acquire this topographic data, the SRTM payload was outfitted with two radar antenna, one attached to the shuttle payload bay while the other antenna was attached to the end of a 60 meter boom or mast that extended out from the payload bay. The shuttle was flown upside down and tail first to collect the data for the simultaneous radar observations. With its radars sweeping the Earth’s land surfaces, SRTM produced the world’s first near global, high-resolution topographic database.

This model was made by Solid Terrain Modeling which used the SRTM data to control its cutting and printing machines, cutting into high-density polyurethane foam. The image of the city was obtained from a Landsat-7 satellite from 2011 and was then printed directly onto the model. This model can be found in the lobby of the Geography and Map Division. Walking past it every day, I sometimes forget how amazing this piece of artwork really is.

This commissioned effort was created with sealskin and driftwood. Individual islands were whittled from Siberian driftwood. The wood was then sewn onto the sealskin. Next, the sealskin was painted. Yellow on the islands represents grassy and swampy land; blue indicates lakes; black shows the extent of country covered with black lichens. Tidal areas are left uncolored. Reefs are demarked by pencil. The map encompasses an area of approximately 70 square miles at a scale of 1 in to 1,760 feet and is a wonderful representation of indigenous mapping in Greenland.

As we wrap up our topographic highlights, I can’t end without a last fan favorite that is requested a lot on tours of the division. We don’t know much about the map featured below or the background of the company, but the medium is unmistakable, chocolate! Made by the Chocolate Topographic Company in 1991, this topographic chocolate masterpiece is of the Grand Canyon with all its ridges and valleys.

While this post can only show a small portion of our topographic collection, you are always welcome to view these maps and others in person in our reading room. There is always something worth seeing in our world of maps!

Learn More:

• Learn about topographic mapping and its historical significance from the United States Geologic Service
• Read about the Disko Bay map on Worlds Revealed
• Interested in the topography outside of Earth? Check out these blog posts about early topographic mapping of the Moon and Venus!

Are you interested in using the elements or objects on a map to better understand its meaning? If so, don't miss Exploring Map Surrounds, a special event hosted by the Geography and Map Division and the Philip Lee Phillips Society (PLPS) at the Library of Congress. This free in-person event, taking place on Thursday, May 8, 2025, from 1:15 PM to 4:15 PM in the iconic Thomas Jefferson Building, will explore the significance of map surrounds through engaging talks and a themed display.

The event is free, but registration is required. Learn more and register to attend here. 

All event activities will take place in the Thomas Jefferson Building (10 First Street SE, Washington, DC).

The event's schedule includes:

1:15pm in LJ-119: Doors open for a meet & greet
1:45pm - 2:45pm in LJ-119: Chet Van Duzer, "Drawing Identity: Cartographic Self-Portraits in the 20th and 21st Centuries" 
2:45pm - 3:15pm in LJ-113: Themed Map Display by the Geography and Map Division
3:15pm  - 4:15pm in LJ-119: Dr. Juliet Wiersema and Meghan Hill: "Sights on Spice: A Historical and Material Exploration of William Hacke's A Description of the Sea Coasts … East Indies."

Meet the Speakers:

Chet Van Duzer

Chet Van Duzer is a historian of cartography and a board member of the Lazarus Project at the University of Rochester, which brings multispectral imaging (a technology for recovering information from damaged manuscripts) to cultural institutions around the world. He has published extensively on medieval and Renaissance maps; his recent books include Henricus Martellus's World Map at Yale (c. 1491): Multispectral Imaging, Sources, and Influence, published by Springer in 2019, and Martin Waldseemüller's Carta marina of 1516: Study and Transcription of the Long Legends, published by Springer in 2020. His book Frames that Speak: Cartouches on Early Modern Maps was published by Brill in Open Access in 2023. His current projects are books about self-portraits by cartographers that appear on maps and the historical cartography of the Indian Ocean.

Dr. Juliet Wiersema

Juliet Wiersema specializes in the visual and material culture of the Pre-Hispanic and late Spanish Colonial Andes (Peru and Colombia). She holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Archaeology from the University of Maryland and an M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Juliet's new book project, "Ports of Plunder and Islands of Entanglement: William Hacke's "Pirate Maps" of the Spanish South Sea" critically examines extant copies of Hacke's hand-painted South Sea Waggoners, focusing attention on the geographic areas between the two "gateways" of entry into the Pacific, the Isthmus of Panama and the Straights of Magellan. Her study aims to recover the overlooked but pivotal role that unfrequented bays, lesser ports, and remote islands held for Spanish navigators and their foreign adversaries.

Meghan Hill

Meghan Hill is a Preservation Science Specialist in the Preservation Research and Testing Division at the Library of Congress. Her background is in fine art, art history, and curatorial studies, having graduated with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and she is currently a PhD candidate at the University College Cork, exemplifying the impact of scientific research on humanities-based scholarship. She is an expert in spectral imaging and has worked with numerous cultural heritage institutions around the world to integrate and establish multispectral workflows in their digitization and preservation programs. At the Library she works with conservators, curators, and scholars to apply noninvasive optical technologies to support the preservation of the Library's extensive and eclectic collections and expand the historical understanding of these materials.

Don't miss this unique opportunity to explore the fascinating world of map surrounds with experts in the field!

This event is made possible by gifts to the Library of Congress Philip Lee Phillips Map Society. 

In my previous post about independent cities and the counties that encircle them, I wrote about how the nation's largest independent city, Baltimore, Maryland, is surrounded by a county of the same name. Baltimore City and Baltimore County, while once united, have had separate governments since 1851. Marylanders owe the popular use of this name, as well as the name of their state, to their colonial founder.

Cecil Calvert, 2^nd Lord Baltimore, had a big life change in 1632. His father George Calvert (1^st Lord Baltimore) died that year, causing him to inherit a colonial grant in the Americas that George had just secured from King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland. The colony was to be called Maryland, after the king's wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. Before this turn of events, "Baltimore" had been a noble title in Ireland, associated with one family and principally one location. Now, it was going trans-Atlantic.

If you look at the map below, you can see the situation as rendered in the 1670s by prolific English cartographer John Speed. Settlers under Lord Baltimore's charter first arrived in 1634, encountering the Virginia colony and gradually making their way north up the Chesapeake Bay, eventually reaching the Susquehanna River. You can clearly see these bodies of water on the map, which is oriented with west at the top, but you can also see the prominence of the Calvert family's names on the Maryland coast. There's Calverton County (now Calvert County), followed by Anne Arundel County and the city of Arundelton (now Annapolis), named for Cecil Calvert's wife, Ann Arundell. (The spelling of her name was varied even not long after her lifetime, and has shifted further into the current form of the county name.) Next, we see Baltimore County, as well as Baltimore Town, and across the Susquehanna, "Baltimore M," which may stand for "manor." As we approach the Eastern Shore, we see Caecil M and Caecil County (now Cecil County). If you know your Maryland geography, it might immediately jump out to you that Baltimore County is not quite this large anymore - as of 1773, Harford County sits between the eastern limit of Baltimore County and western limit of Cecil County. And if, like me, you're quite familiar with Baltimore City, you'll see that Baltimore Town is not the Baltimore of today!

Current-day Baltimore is located at the mouth of the Patapsco River, but on this map Baltimore Town appears well north of the Patapsco by about 30 miles, between the Bush and Susquehanna Rivers. The Speed map is a prominent early example, but I've noticed Baltimore in the northern location on maps from our collection almost through the end of the 18^th century. (Stay tuned for another example.) As I briefly mentioned in my independent cities post, there was indeed an "Old Baltimore Town" established in 1661 at this northern site, when the seat of power in newly established (in 1659-60) Baltimore County was closer to its borders with Pennsylvania. Eventually, it lost its political importance to the "new" Baltimore Town that had grown around the economic powerhouse of the port of Baltimore, which was established in 1706. The new Baltimore Town was incorporated in 1729, became the new county seat in 1768, and was incorporated as Baltimore City in 1796.

Why did one Baltimore fade and another go gangbusters? There are probably some factors that have been lost to history which explain why, but one likely reason appears right on the maps: geographic advantage. Even on the 1670s John Speed map, before it was economically significant, the Patapsco River stands out. It's very wide, and has several branches that stretch further inland like small fingers, which gives a visual tip-off that it would be good for shipping. This fact becomes even clearer on later maps once the area was better surveyed by locals, such as this one.

On this 1755 map of Virginia, Maryland, and other neighboring states, the Patapsco River appears not only very large but also as stretching very far west and inland. This geographic feature was crucial to Baltimore's success, as the western-most port on the eastern seaboard. The port's inland reach made it perfect for 18^th and 19^th-century waterfront businesses and easily accessible to export farmers in Pennsylvania and Ohio. To this day, the Port of Baltimore is one of the busiest ports in the United States and can accommodate much larger ships than many commercial ports can, as we were all reminded so poignantly after the Key Bridge collapse last year.

Oddly enough, while this 1755 map still has Baltimore in the old location - presumably from being made with information that was slightly out of date - it does foreshadow the significance of the port and new city, because it shows the location of the Baltimore Iron Works. Not only did the new Baltimore port have suitably navigable waterways for reaching inland business, the area around it was also rich in valuable natural resources for shipping back to the British Isles, such as timber from then-vast forests and something that would also make Baltimore wealthy well into the 20^th century: iron ore deposits.

The Baltimore Iron Works started in 1731, apparently early enough and with enough of a splash for it to be captured on the 1755 map, even as the mapmakers missed the news about the city's changing location. It was the second iron works in the Maryland colony, but the first to be locally owned. It only operated until 1799, but it paved the way for a dozen other companies around Baltimore County, and in 1889, a mill at Baltimore City's Sparrows Point began producing steel. The Sparrows Point mill was bought by Bethlehem Steel and was the largest steel producer in the world by 1954. To read more about Bethlehem Steel's rise, fall, and impact on the local economy around Sparrows Point, see the Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project from the Baltimore Museum of Industry.

Eventually, the news about the bustling new Baltimore City did make its way to British cartographers, and its prominence quickly grew in the newly independent nation. During the American Revolution, Baltimore City was a meeting place for the Continental Congress and the home of a militia tasked with suppressing loyalist activities on the Eastern Shore. It was definitely, so to speak, on the map.

Learn More

• To learn more about Baltimore City and County history, see my previous post and its citations
• For more about the history of the Baltimore Iron Works, see this page from the Mount Clare Museum
• For more about the Bethlehem Steel Legacy Project, see this page from the Baltimore Museum of Industry
• For more about the history of Aberdeen Proving Ground, see this page from their official website

Are you Austria-hungry for maps of Austria-Hungary? If so, you are in luck! The Geography and Map Division, in collaboration with the Collections Digitization Division, recently completed digitization of a large (and I mean large) set of maps. The new digital collection comprises all editions of all sheets of the Spezialkarte der o¨sterreichisch-ungarischen Monarchie, a detailed topographic survey of the country at a 1:75,000 scale, held in the Geography and Map Division for a grand total of 6,346 digital images.

The dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary existed from 1867 to 1918, a period of considerable change in central and eastern Europe. The empire was multiethnic, with large Hungarian, German, Czech, Jewish, Romanian, Ukrainian, and various other populations. Dozens of languages were spoken daily; this multilingual situation is reflected in the Spezialkarte, which frequently provides translations for place names.

For an example, let's look at the hometown of 20^th-century cartographer Erwin Raisz. His obituary in Annals of the Association of American Geographers lists his birthplace as Locse, Hungary. Locse appears on the 1912 edition of sheet 4365 of the Spezialkarte. Beneath the name Locse, the German name for the town appears: Leutschau.

In this 1894 edition, however, Leutschau is given prominence, with the Hungarian Locse and Slovak Levoce appearing in parentheses. Today, the town is located in Slovakia, and can be found on modern maps with the spelling Levoca.

Trying to locate a place name within Austria-Hungary is often not straightforward; different languages may have been used more at different times, or authorities may refer to a German or Hungarian version of a place name while inhabitants called it something else in the local language. Genealogists with documents referencing an ancestor’s birthplace in “Austria” may in fact be looking for a town within modern Croatia, Romania, or the Czech Republic. Gazetteers such as the Orts- und Verkehrs-Lexikon von Oesterreich-Ungarn can help with this, as they often include alternative language versions of place names. Older gazetteers may list the Comitat and Bezirk in which the town is located; modern gazetteers frequently include geographic coordinates. The research guide Cartographic Resources for Genealogical Research: Eastern Europe and Russia has more information on using this map set for genealogical research.

Aside from its usefulness in locating toponyms, the Spezialkarte provides a fascinating snapshot of land use in this part of Europe during the period of coverage. A peek at the map key, found in the beginning of the set, shows the dazzling variety of features depicted on these maps:

As the maps span several decades, interesting comparisons can be made across maps of the same area, with the caveat that use of symbols may have varied over time. For an example, let’s look at the area of Moschendorf, Austria, and Pinkamindszent, Hungary, in 1896 (top) and 1935 (bottom):

With such a wealth of information contained in these maps, we’ve provided multiple ways to access them. In addition to the digitized sheets, an earlier, experimental digitized version of the set can be downloaded as a dataset from LC Labs. The Austro-Hungarian map set data package contains 4,998 georeferenced TIFF image files (as well as non-georeferenced versions). And, of course, the maps can be viewed in person in the Geography and Map Reading Room.

Learn More:

• Find tips for using this set for genealogical research in our research guide Cartographic Resources for Genealogical Research: Eastern Europe and Russia
• Download the set as an experimental data package

The Panoramic Maps collection is one of the most popular set of maps held in the Geography and Map Division, and the appeal of these maps is not hard to decipher. As described previously here in Worlds Revealed, the panoramic maps are stunning “bird’s-eye view” illustrations of towns and cities across the U.S. and Canada, largely created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Numerous illustrators and cartographers had a hand in producing these works of art over the course of decades, but in exploring the work of a single artist, Augustus Koch, we can appreciate Koch’s particular talents as well as celebrate the maps of this collection as touchstones of civic pride.

Augustus Koch was born in Germany in 1840 and emigrated to Wisconsin, although at what age he did is unclear. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Koch enlisted with a Wisconsin regiment and would eventually serve as an engineering officer to a black regiment of advancing Union troops in Mississippi. It was during the war that Koch first start producing maps. Following the war, he went into business illustrating incredible bird’s-eye views of towns and cities across the growing nation. While some panoramic map artists may be more well known, Koch is considered to be among the most well-traveled, producing over 100 maps in 23 states.

The Geography and Map Division holds at least 41 of Koch’s panoramic works, and choosing just a few of his stunning views to spotlight is a difficult task. His 1875 view of Virginia City, Nevada (shown below) is worth a look, with Mt. Davidson towering over the silver mining boomtown, which is shown here at the height of its population and mining productivity. It is interesting to compare this map with Grafton Taylor Brown’s 1861 view of Virginia City, which captures the town from a different angle and in the town’s early years shortly after the discovery of silver in Mt. Davidson (the Comstock Lode).

Another of Koch’s finest works is a sweeping view of the present-day independent cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth in Virginia. Produced around 1891, late in Koch’s career, the map shows the region as a bustling center of seafaring. A close-in view of the map reveals the fine details that Koch applied in his work.

Koch’s career was so wide reaching that he had the opportunity to illustrate some cities multiple times. His bird’s-eye views of Jacksonville, Florida in 1876 and 1893, for example, are valuable resources for visualizing the growth of the city over the course of 17 years.

Koch’s 1896 panoramic view of Kansas City, where he lived for most of his career, is a vibrant masterwork profiling the industrial West Bottoms area of the city. Produced just a few years before Koch’s death, the map conveys the massive scale of the city’s industrial production, from its vast stockyards to its complex array of railway lines.

Newspaper articles from the time confirm that communities were elated with Koch’s exceptional panoramas. A notice in the November 22, 1875 Daily Press and Dakotaian describes a “true to life” Koch bird’s-eye view of Yankton in present-day South Dakota and emphasizes that “the view would make an excellent advertising medium for our real estate men, and copies of it should be hung in every leading hotel in the country.” In encouraging the public to purchase copies of Koch’s view of Portland, Maine, the Portland Daily Press of July 31, 1875 states that “we desire to remind our citizens that this is one of the most valuable, reliable and desirable works of the kind ever presented to the public.”

In the September 9, 1891 edition of the Morning News of Savannah, Georgia, an article celebrates the aforementioned Norfolk and Portsmouth, Virginia map and notes that Koch would be publishing a view of Savannah in the near future. Promoting local investment in these kinds of projects, the article quotes from the Norfolk Landmark to state:

“The production of the splendid lithograph referred to here, of the bird’s-eye view of the city of Norfolk and vicinity, is overwhelming testimony of the fact that our people need not go to the northern cities for such work as this, as they have been doing almost uniformly. It is about time that it should be recognized that we are able to do our own work, and to those who have had the notion that it is necessary, in order, to get maps, lithographs, etc., well executed, we need only to say: Look at the production here mentioned, and for the future inquire around home before sending your money away.”

It is interesting to consider how these maps, celebrated for showcasing hometown pride and local entrepreneurialism, were created by an artist traveling from coast to coast, from Bangor to Seattle, to carefully translate these ideals into illustrations of towns and cities across the country. From the published praise from the time to the stunning detail and artistry of the maps themselves, it is clear that Augustus Koch made an important impact on the world of bird’s-eye views.

Further Reading:

• Did you know that there was another German-born cartographer working in the mid- to late-19th century by the name of Augustus Koch? This Augustus Koch left Germany following the German revolutions of 1848-1849, traveling first to England and then to Auckland, New Zealand. He gained work as a draftsman for an expedition mapping the interior of New Zealand’s North Island, and from there, began a prolific mapmaking and surveying career. The Geography and Map Division holds a facsimile of his 1868 Sketch map of Wairoa and Poverty Bay districts and a 2015 biography Augustus Koch - Mapmaker by Rolf W. Brednich.
• Read more about the aforementioned Grafton Taylor Brown, a trailblazing African American cartographer known for his bird’s-eye views, in this 2017 Worlds Revealed post.
• Explore over one thousand bird’s-eye view maps held by the Library of Congress in this fun interactive map: View from Above: Exploring the Panoramic Map Collection.

Curious about our collections? Please join Geography and Map Division staff next week for a virtual orientation to our collections and resources!

Date: Tuesday, April 8, 2025

Time: 3:00-4:00 pm (Eastern)

Location: Online

Register for this session here!

Reference librarians Julie Stoner and Amelia Raines will present an introduction to the Geography and Map collections at the Library of Congress. This orientation session, aimed at the general public, will highlight a wide range of cartographic formats and subject matter. The focus of the session will be on maps and online resources available to all patrons any time or place in the world. Topics covered will also include search tips and tricks, research and collection guides, ways to engage with the collections online, and how to prepare for a future trip to the reading room. After the presentation, staff look forward to answering additional questions from attendees.