Maps & Mapping
Ortelius’s 1570 World Map
Ortelius’s 1570 world map helped establish the modern atlas—and shows how mapmakers combined geographic knowledge with speculation.
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Introducing the Lost Surveyor Map Archive
A digital map archive is taking shape at Lost Surveyor, with Florida at its center, carefully attributed sources and tools for looking closely at the history on each sheet.
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Boundaries & Land Rights
To Survey or Not to Survey: A Fight in Maryland Over the Right to Survey
Maryland landowners have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review an order allowing survey crews onto private land for…
Maps & Mapping
Ferdinand Rudolph Hassler: A Swiss Immigrant’s American Coast
Stranded abroad by war and sidelined at home by Congress, Ferdinand Hassler kept pursuing a coast survey that would…
Exploration & Navigation
James Cook: The Surveyor Before the Famous Voyages
Before the Pacific made him famous, James Cook spent years charting Newfoundland. Those coastal surveys reveal the patient mapmaker…
Boundaries & Land Rights
Benjamin Banneker: Looking to the Stars, Helping Shape a Capital
A Maryland farmer, astronomer, and almanac maker brought his skills to the new capital’s boundary survey—and used his pen…
Boundaries & Land Rights
An Old Fence, a Missing Element: Hearn Properties v. Cruce
A Madison County fence dispute shows why the history of a line matters, and why its age alone could…
Society & Culture
Four Million Acres: The Scale and Legacy of the Disston Purchase
Four million acres for $1 million: the scale of the Disston purchase and how its land, companies and investments…
Boundaries & Land Rights
Record the Sketch: Why a Legal Description Needs Its Drawing
When a sketch has already been prepared with a legal description, recording only the words leaves useful work behind.…
Boundaries & Land Rights
Andrew Ellicott: Drawing America’s Southern Line
From Washington’s future streets to the border of Spanish Florida, Andrew Ellicott turned national ambitions into lines on the…
The Map Archive
102 maps
Explore historical maps, survey records and remarkable places from around the world.
Browse the Map Archive
