I used to just pull up Google Maps for everything, even hiking trails (which honestly got me lost a few times). Last spring I found a 1920s topo map of the White Mountains at a flea market for $5, and it had old logging roads that aren't on any modern app. Now I overlay those old roads on my phone when I'm out exploring, and I've found three abandoned campsites that way. Anyone else find weird hidden spots from century-old maps?
I picked up a 1720 map of New France last week and Lake Michigan is drawn like a perfect circle, is this a common error or did some cartographer just guess?
I was looking at this old map I picked up at an estate sale in Pittsburgh, dated 1854. At first I thought it was just a smudge near the border of Prussia and Austria. But then I got my magnifying glass out and realized it was a tiny territory called 'Neutral Moresnet', only about 1.5 square miles. Turns out it was a real place that existed from 1816 to 1920 because they couldn't decide who got the zinc mine there. Has anyone else stumbled across a borderline fictional sounding country on a map that actually existed?
I bought this reprint of a Sanborn fire insurance map from 1892 for $35 at a local antique store. Turns out there used to be a small creek called Willow Brook right where my garden shed is now, it got buried in the 1920s for a sewer line. My neighbor's been complaining about her basement flooding every spring and I bet this old map explains why the water pools on our street. Has anyone else found a hidden river or stream on an old map that changed how you see your area?
So I got this map of Nevada from an estate sale last month, paid like $15 for it. I was just looking at the old mining claims near Tonopah when I noticed a tiny dot labeled 'Queen City' that's not on any modern map I can find. Spent 2 hours cross-referencing it with Google Earth and USGS records, and there's literally nothing there now except some foundation stones. Has anyone else run into a town that just vanished off the face of the earth like that?
I always thought those digital scans people sell were just low-effort junk, but last month I downloaded a 1920s map of Galicia for $12 and it showed a tiny hamlet called Berezów that matched up exactly with a faded letter I found in my grandma's attic, has anyone else had luck tracking down family places with old maps?
Last month I was showing off my 1850s map of California with a weird town called 'Aguaje' near San Diego, and a guy at the meetup gently pointed out it was a fictitious entry (you know, a copyright trap), and I felt like an absolute fool for all the times I'd bragged about 'fake maps' before.