Cartographic Ephemera and American Travel Mapping

Abstract

The ephemeral maps that are discussed in this article include those found in promotional brochures and handbills, on postcards, souvenirs, placemats, and hotel stationery. They include the maps of local streets and roads handed out at car rental and real estate agencies, maps on timetables and transportation tickets, and in airline magazines. The types and formats of these objects are almost unlimited, and their numbers are prodigious. Ephemeral maps, like ephemera in general struggle for a place among the established classes of formats—books, prints, manuscripts, archives, broadsheets, pamphlets, and yes, maps among them—that professional librarians use in catalog descriptions and finding aids. It is hard in practice to delineate the boundary between a map and a brochure as formats; perhaps we shouldn’t try. In an effort to support informed choices, this paper offers a classification of ephemeral travel mapping before concluding with a case for its retention (wherever practical).

Keywords:

• Travel mapping
• ephemera
• map history
• American travel maps
• map ephemera

Notes

Notes

1 “Within a radius of 85 miles of our city are practically all of the tourist attractions of the area, which include the Shawnee Forest Wonderland, no less than 12 State Parks, New Harmony, Vincennes, St. Louis, the French Settlements in Randolph County, the Shelbyville, Ramsey and Carlyle Lakes, Lake Egypt, the Crab Orchard complex, and 25,000-acre Bend Lake now being developed.”

2 Many populated maps are thus published by or for consortiums of local and regional enterprises, discussed in the source-based classification below.

3 A power perhaps matched only by the rider of a horse, which explains in part why the American cowboy has remained such a durable national icon.

4 This said, it is worth noting that the development and popularity of AAA Triptiks and Conoco Touraides from the late 1930s reflected the continued value of “professional” help with wayfinding.

5 For example, Mormon Pioneer Trail, Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail, National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of the Interior, Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (Washington: National Park Service, U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service., 2007).

6 The company also advertised 14 California tours, a tour of Gettysburg, and 6 national park tours in the U.S. and Canada.

7 For example: Summer Directory 1961 Holiday Inns of America; 1960 Complimentary Directory, Quality Courts United Inc.; 1968 Travel Guide, The Best Western Hotels; TravelLodge Complimentary 1967 Directory; Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodges 1969 Directory; These seem to have mostly disappeared in the 21^st century, as indexed maps on hotel chains’ websites serve these purposes far more efficiently.

8 For example: Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, Montana (Fort Peck, MT: Fort Peck District, Corps of Engineers, Department of the Army, 1949); Amistad Dam and Reservoir Project (International Boundary & Water Commission, 1974).

9 For example, Covered Bridge Trail of Georgia, Inc.: “Where time stands still” (Thomaston, GA: Covered Bridge Trail of Georgia, Inc., [ca. 2010]).

10 The company also issued in atlas format complete sets of these highly ephemeral maps, e.g.: Travel Guide by Travel Mats (Prairie du Chien, WI: Travelmats, 1969).