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Club Information Map Information Buy/Sell/Trade Maps Miscellaneous
| RMCA - Fall 2001 Newsletter PreviewMid-West Maps: Suggestions on Dating Some maps are clearly date; some are dated by a publisher's code; but other maps having no date or code must be dated by some other means. One way to estimate the year of a map is to compare highway data with other maps of the same region. Road building and paving of dirt roars occurred at such a pace that some oil companies issues from two to four editions of many maps yearly. Most companies, however, stuck with one edition, making it fairly easy to do this kind of comparison. These are some differences due to the lag from data compilation to publishing, and the time of year that each publisher issued their maps. So while it is not an exact science, if route 893 from Lloyd, PA, to Hoytville is gravel halfway and paved the remainder of the way on one map, and is paved on another map, the paved one is most likely the later edition. In an earlier RMCA newsletter, Dave Cole presented his findings for successfully breaking the code on early Mid-West Map Company road maps. Unfortunately, MWM did not continue the use of a single code type throughout their road map history, so their later un-coded, undated issues present greater dating problems. Also, Mid-West Map issued a variety of map types. ... Is THIS the Last ARCO Map? "No ARCO Maps are known after 1973," according to page ARCO-5 in A Catalog of Oil Company Road Maps, edited by Stan DeOrsey, RMCA #76. I never saw any reason to contest that until I recently found an ARCO map dated 1977! ... Road Maps before the 20th Century Most of us think road maps as a product of the automobile age. They are almost exclusively 20th and most came from automobile-related entities such as the gasoline/tire companies, and the automobile associations. But roads have been around for millennia and people had to find their way to their destination. While much early travel was along waterways, and since 1830 along railways, our ancestors also traveled by horse, by camel, and by foot. In the third century AD, the Romans produced a map showing about 50,000 miles of road in their empire. Now know as the Peutinger Table, it was in the form of a roll about 22 feet long and a foot wide, showing roads in straight lines with distances between stages. The shapes of the land and countries were purposely distorted to make it an effective guide. A copy of this map exists today in Vienna. ... Map Sheet Mid-West Map Company - Aurora, Missouri |
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