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Club Information Map Information Buy/Sell/Trade Maps Miscellaneous
| RMCA - Spring 1997 Newsletter PreviewWho Gave Away the First Free Road Maps? - Part I There's that question again, this time posed on the back page of that undated RMCA Newsletter you received last September. Who published and distributed the first road map? Presumably, we will have to insert "free" in the description of the map , too, if one of the contenders for the honor is the Gulf Refining Company, which issued such maps in 1914 free of charge, and another is the Union Oil Company of California, which gave away map booklets as early as 1910, all as mentioned in the Newsletter. If we limit our search to oil companies, them probably it was Union Oil, as speculated in the Newsletter and illustrated therein. Gulf, as most map collectors know, has always claimed to have been the first to give away road maps free of charge. but Walter Ristow's article, "A Half Century of Oil-Company Road Maps" (Surveying and Mapping Magazine, Dec., 1964), mentioned in the Newsletter, also describes some other earlier free maps given out by oil companies. One was the Monarch Oil Refining Company, of San Francisco, which tried giving away little road atlases titled Auto Road Maps for California & Nevada as early as 1911. ... The Official Maps Research Project When I first started seriously collecting road maps a few years ago, I decided to concentrate on those issued by state and provincial highway departments. One of the main reasons for this decision was that I felt completely overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to collect and categorize oil company maps. There just seemed to be too many different companies out there, and with each one publishing many different titles each year, the number would quickly reach into the tens of thousands. With official maps, there would only be 50 states (I later expanded to Canada) with no more than one map per year. Or so I thought! I soon came to realize that many states issued mare than one map a year, such as summer and winter editions, and that many varieties exist within a given year. What would be really nice, I thought, would be a checklist of all known issues and varieties. After talking with a fellow collector, Dave Schul, we decided to compile just such a list. The Official Maps Research Project was devised as a means of cataloging all known "Official" maps, for the purpose of providing collectors a check list on what is available. It is not intended to provide detailed descriptions for each map, but simply a quick reference for collectors to identify what they have, and see what else is out there. For this project, official maps are defined as those maps issued by highway departments or similar entities, to be distributed to the general public (usually for free), for the purpose of travel and tourism. All states and territories of the US and provinces and territories of Canada are included in this project. There have been many quasi-official maps published, such as state park maps, and variants on highway department maps. For example, Zephyr oil company used the Wisconsin and Michigan highway department base maps with their own covers. For the most part, these peripheral official maps and not included in the Official Maps Research Project (OMRP). Certain issued, such as the Illinois Secretary of State maps, are included due to their wide acceptance amongst the official map collector community. ... The Mystique of Collecting Like a gold miner in the Rockies, every collector is searching for that "find." Flea markets are territories a paper gold miner finds alluring. There are two better than average flea markets close to home never the less they just never seem to have road maps. "Do you have any old road maps?" comes from my mouth like a broken record. "I Have some at the house but didn't bring them today," is the regular reply. One dealer specializes in paper trash, the aftermath of estate and yard sales. His tables are stacked with an array of old magazines from the 30s and 40s, dog-eared paperback books, letters, and advertisements, all scattered amidst a pile of junk. ... Map Sheet Wisconsin Officials, 1931-1997
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