A Six Pack of Maps

Spring beer season is here. If you look at the bottom of your six pack you may find a nice map directing you to the brewery. Just be careful not to turn it over when it's full of bottles. I like these maps because they are usually hand drawn (or in a hand drawn style) making for creative alternatives to the googly, bingy maps we've become accustomed to. Of course, most brewing companies use a google type map on their web sites so I had to scan some six packs.

Here are six examples from beers that are commonly available here in the Northeastern USA. I have a few others from farther afield that will make for a future post. This is not meant as an endorsement of these beers. They are just the ones I've bought in six packs recently and some of them were better than others.

From Maine - the Belfast Bay Brewing Company.

Magic Hat in South Burlington, Vermont. I've actually been on this tour!

Victory - Downingtown, PA. A highly schematic map where 202 and 30 are really important while 476 and Route 1 don't make the cut.

While in Pennsylvania stop by Troegs - look for a beer bottle by the railroad tracks. They're moving to Hershey* though so this map may not help you anymore.

Circling up to western New York, there's the Southern Tier Brewing Company.

Finally we head back eastwards for a colorful map from the Ithaca Beer Company.

If you find a nice map on the bottom of your six pack send it over and maybe I'll put it in a future post.

*UPDATE - since I began collecting these Troeg's has in fact moved so I had to buy another six pack of their beer. Here's the map to their new digs with I-81's westward sweep greatly exaggerated for artistic effect - try doing that on a google map!

The Pennsylvania Underground Railroad

To honor black history month, I went digging for maps. While the Underground Railroad is only a piece of that history, it has some of the most interesting map content. I came across this nice map of Underground Railroad sites around Kennett Square in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Quakers from the area were active in the abolitionist movement. The map is from the Kennett Square Underground Railroad Center.

A large print of the map is available here. Below is a detail:

I also found this schematic of the area from the website of Singing Wid a Sword in Ma Han  - a musical docudrama of the Underground Railroad in Pennsylvania playing in New York City.

For a complete picture of the Railroad's breadth, here is a map from Slavery in America.

Gas Station Maps-The Early Days

According to Early Gulf Road Maps of Pennsylvania the Gulf Oil Corporation is usually credited with the first drive in gas station - on Baum Boulevard in Pittsburgh (where the company was headquartered) and the first freely distributed road maps.

Both of these credits are subject to debate - see footnote two from the article above, however the early oil company road maps were predominantly from Gulf. The first Gulf maps were made by W. B. Akins, a Pittsburgh advertising man. After a few years they switched to professional map making companies, first the American Blue Book Company, then Rand McNally and then H.M. Gousha after Harry Gousha left Rand McNally to start his own company.

Below are some details from a 1915 road map of Pennsylvania produced by the Automobile Blue Book Company and distributed by Gulf.

What is interesting (to me) about these maps is the importance of certain places (and lack of others) in the era before expressways.

The cover talks up "that good Gulf gasoline" and the "sterling qualities of this excellent petroleum product." It also advertises Supreme Auto Oil - "Its high viscosity renders it a perfect warm weather lubricant and its low cold test an Ideal Winter Oil, - as it flows freely at zero." 

In addition to road maps Gulf also distributed trip itinerary maps. Here are routes from Pittsburgh to Buffalo and Cleveland (marked in orange), with a listing of the places in between and the mileage. I like the quaint picture too.

Below is a 1917 "Half Day Tour" from Philadelphia to New Hope, Lambertville and Trenton. These tours list detailed routes but don't tell you what to see along the way or why you should go to places like Lambertville. They do tell you where to fill up your tank - in this case at the Gulf station at Broad and Hunting Park in North Philadelphia. Gulf only had seven stations in Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey at the time.

Of course I chose this tour for my own personal history. We lived in this area and took many of these trips.

Here is a 1925 Gulf map of parking regulations in downtown Pittsburgh. By then there were 14 Gulf stations in Pittsburgh. The takeaway from this map is to either try to find a space near the Point or on Congress St if you don't want to keep moving your car.

I will finish up with a detailed itinerary for the often changing Lincoln Highway, renamed Quebec Route 366 briefly in summer 2011. I have had inquiries about the specific route of this road - here it was in 1925. Street by street directions are listed for Pennsylvania. The New Jersey route is listed by town only.

Thanks to Historical Maps of Pennsylvania for the content of this post.

Map of the Week Miscellany for September, 2011

There's a lot going on this week and if I only didn't have to work I could devote more time to these posts and make them more meaningful but be careful what you wish for. Anyway here are a few interesting items I've found this week:

An Army Corps of Engineers map of the flood control structures in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.

 The manual this map appears in describes how the levees in Wilkes Barre and across the river in Kingston can form a bottleneck and make flooding worse for communities downstream. In 1972 these walls were too short to contain the flow from Tropical Storm Agnes and the city was flooded. The water stored from this flooding helped spare downstream places like Sunbury. Since then the levees have been raised, partially sparing Wilkes Barre from this weekend's floods (though water did get in by seeping under the levees.)

This sent more water to downstream places like Bloomsburg, where record setting flooding occurred.


Below is a map from the AP showing the some of the worst hit places.

Daniel Huffman's wonderful river schematic map shows how these places interconnect.

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Other Miscellaneous Notes:
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Tomorrow night (September 15th) David Byrne will squish an inflatable globe under the High Line in New York City. It will be there until October 1st. To sort of quote one of his songs "this was a parking lot, now it's all covered in globe." More information is available from New York Magazine.

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From LA Taco ("Celebrating the taco lifestyle in Los Angeles") comes this chart showing the population growth of the largest cities in the USA. 

Bicycling on the Google Trails

I was looking at a bicycling route in eastern Pennsylvania when I discovered that Google Maps now has a bicycling option. It is available under the "Traffic" tab - click on "more" to access it.

They don't provide you with a legend but it looks like the dark green are off-road paths and trails, lighter green are bike lanes and dashed lines are proposed routes. The maps tend to be optomistic-some of these routes are impassible mudholes in the spring as I recently discovered. Other paths look like this one.

The picture above is of the circled path below. I thought it looked like an odd place for an off road path so I looked it up on street view and unless the DRPA has changed its policy then this can't legally be considered a bicycle route. Note also the continuing presence of Quebec Route 366 throughout our country.

Bicycling directions are also available by clicking the bicycle icon (the far right choice at the top.) Of course, this is also subject to google errors such as telling you to take Quebec Route 366 across western Pennsylvania.

Upon further review the driving route still appears as the first choice. You have to scroll down on these directions to see that this is not actually the suggested bicycle route. You can't ride your bike on Quebec Route 366 through Greensburg because it is a limited access highway. The bicycle route finds a way to sensibly avoid central Greensburg. However, they still direct you onto some sections of the highway that don't look very legal or safe.
Where there are bicycling trails the directions they will find them and give you a pretty good route.

It's good to see the Google giving bicycling some attention and the tools are useful, if not perfect. They also make me want to try some new routes. So get on your bike and enjoy the summer!

Bad Map of the Week-The Pennsylvania Turnpike

When you shift an entire state northward strange things start to happen. Philadelphia and Scranton disappear, the Maryland border runs across the middle of the state and the Susquehanna River starts flowing into the Delaware.
Thanks to Card Cow for the image.

Description:
America's Super Highway. Throughout the entire length of the Turnpike gasoline service stations and restaurants are located on both sides of the roadway at staggered points. The stations provided by the Standard Oil Co. Of Penna. Are unique and de luxe. They are built along early Pennsylvania architectural lines. the adjoining attractive restaurants are operated by the famous Howard Johnson

Maps in Unexpected Places - Part 1

This is the first of an occasional series highlighting maps in, you know, unexpected places. I saw this map of the Underground Railroad on a U-Haul truck this morning.

You can see all the states and Canadian provinces at U-Haul's online super graphics page.

Other map oriented truck graphics include North Dakota...

...and one of my personal favorites, Pennsylvania.

The "Did you know..." texts from these images:

Ontario: Abolishing slavery decades earlier than the U.S., Canada became a haven for enslaved people seeking freedom. How did "conductors" assist thousands?

North Dakota: Flags of the U.S., Mexico & Canada fly at the monument of the geographic center of North America in Rugby.

Pennsylvania: With President Jefferson's instructions in hand, the Lewis and Clark Expedition set sail down the Ohio River. What role did Philadelphia and Lancaster play in the tireless preparations undertaken for this journey? 

Map of the Week - The Lincoln Highway

Tomorrow Abraham Lincoln turns 200! In honor of his big birthday here is a Lincoln Highway Map of the Week.
When I was a little tyke in Levittown, PA we had a street map I'd stare at for hours at a time. I noted that the big road with the drive-in theater, ice cream place, Thom McCann shoe store and 7-11 was called the "Lincoln Highway". Years later when I drove past a section of the highway in Nebraska, I began to wonder if it was the same road. I'd heard talk about the highway running from New York to San Francisco and roughly parallel to Interstate 80. Must be another Lincoln Highway? That route would put you way too far north. Turns out the route is not so direct after all.

There have also been many branches and alignment changes so following the route is not completely straightforward.

About a week ago I walked into my living room and the TV was on with people talking about some very familiar places near Levittown. It was a documentary on PBS called "A Ride Along The Lincoln Highway" produced by WQED-Pittsburgh. Apparently this country is full of Lincoln Highway fanatics. The Lincoln Highway Association founded in 1913 while the road was first being developed is once again an active organization and even has a trading post for merchandise including maps, CDs, videos and collectibles. There is also a Lincoln Highway News blog as well as a blog by Rick Sebak the author of the documentary.
After immersing myself in all these highway facts I can see why all the fuss. The Lincoln Highway was the first road to cross the USA. It leaves New York via the Lincoln Tunnel and enters San Francisco on the Bay Bridge (formerly by ferry). They built these cool looking markers along the route. Where they couldn't place markers they use signs or even telephone poles.













Here is the marker at the western terminus in San Francisco - at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park.

Finally, in closing here is a 1924 highway map with the Lincoln in red. I find the alignments of some of the other blue roads to also be interesting. Thanks to the WQED documentary page for most of the above photos.

Map of the Week 121-Colbert Maps Pennsylvania

It's an exciting week at Comedy Central as the Colbert Report is in Philadelphia for next week's Pennsylvania primary. The most striking feature of his Philadelphia set is a ridiculous map of Pennsylvania. Below is a video where he explains the map and Ben Franklin demonstrates early GIS map zooming capabilities (slow load warning)


By the way if youse want to better understand the Philly accent click here - the pictures will really help!
You'll also some good cheesesteak info on those pages.

MOTW #46

This map was done as part of a study of food choices around University City High School in Philadelphia. The map lets you choose categories of food and recreational opportunities in an attempt to advocate for better opportunities to make healthy choices in an inner city neighborhood.

MOTW #7

This is part of the CD cover for "My Buzz Comes Back" from Philly hip-hoppers Slo-Mo and Mic Wrecka. They have a really cool mental map of the Northern Liberties neighborhood in Philadelphia. Oh and the music's darn good too.