In 1977, the Kinney Shoe Corporation, in cooperation with the President’s Council on Physical Fitness put out a series of walking tour brochures for historical sites across the United States. Perhaps the idea was, walk more, wear down your shoes and buy some more.

Here is an example from Paterson, New Jersey, “America’s first great industrial city”. Alexander Hamilton saw the power potential of the Great Falls of the Passaic River, the second largest waterfall east of the Mississippi River.

The walks range from rustic, historic ambles (I chose this one for both personal history and because it’s near where I’m writing this from),

 to college towns,

 to downtown tours,

 museum and garden loops,

and finally to a “redwood grove near Santa Cruz”.

Along the way, you learn about the ghosts of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Thomas Mann and John O'Hara haunting the libraries and tap rooms of Princeton, Chicago's architecture, the friendliness of Woodstock, Illinois, miscellaneous redwood facts and that Scottsdale, Arizona has some of the "prettiest women".
 

Mapping The Surf

Malin and Mizen is a company that makes specialty maps like the California Surf Map 

 I love the wavy lines and details showing ideal wind and swell directions, coordinates, shark sightings, etc. The hand drawn details on the land are also very nice. 

The company is named for Malin and Mizen Head, the northernmost and southernmost points in Ireland. Here you can see North Malin from the Irish Surf Map. 

They make maps for different sports, history and beer and wine. Here is part of the Irish Pub Map. The x indicates where hot food is available. 

Here is some detail from the California Vineyard Map, the letters indicate grape types and the other symbols are for visiting and tasting information. 

There are also many swimming and golf maps. 

Other surf maps include Australia with its varied topography. Kangaroos and ostriches dot the land. 

Finally, closer to home (for me) is New Jersey. 

 

The Salt Front

The salt front is the point where a river becomes too salty to be safe for drinking water. The front moves upstream from the river’s mouth as less freshwater flows downstream to dilute it. I’d never heard of a salt front until I read about it in a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer. The region’s severe drought in November caused this front to move significantly further upstream than the median monthly location.

On the map above, via the Delaware River Basin Commission (cropped for ease of reading), the pink area is the median salt front location and the pink arrow shows the normal location of this front in November, near Wilmington, Delaware. The blue arrow shows the location as of November 18, 2024. 

The DRBC monitors freshwater flows to keep the salt front from migrating too far upstream. This protects drinking water and industrial water intakes. There are major drinking water intakes for both Philadelphia and New Jersey at the blue box on the map. One way to keep freshwater flowing is to release water from various upstream dams.

The worst droughts were in the mid 1960’s-this shot from one of their videos shows the most upstream movement of the front on November 20, 1964,

and here is a still map showing more specifically the salt front’s furthest upstream location during the “drought of record”

 

Finally, here is a screen shot from the hydrologic conditions dashboard, showing conditions on November 23, 2024.

 

Summer Light Reading

Here is a grab bag of maps I enjoy. I don't have much insight or commentary to add-let's just appreciate them!

SAS Airlines Map, 1965

via Airline Maps Tumblr

 

A "Belgocentric" map of Europe

via StrangeMaps

Melbourne Trams to the Beaches -Vernon Jones, 1930

available at the Transit Maps store

Vernon Jones was a printmaker who apparently did some work for the government of Victoria, Australia. I have not been able to find much information about him online the maps are truly a work of art. He used some really nice text styles too. Here is a detail from Trams to the Racecources, River and Zoo.

also from the Transit Maps store

New Jersey Lighthouses.

While on vacation at the Jersey Shore last year I took a picture of this map, hanging inside the Cape May Lighthouse.

Automobile Routes to Atlantic City sponsored by the Rudolf Hotel. I lost the original source of this one.

Hand drawn personal map of Detroit by 'jide Aje-not to scale! This is part of an exhibit/research project by Detroit Research.

via Detroitography

Walkway Over the Hudson - drawn by Maria Rabinky illustrating the bike/pedestrian rail trail bridge over the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York.

The hand drawn cliffs are a really nice touch. Here's the whole map, complete with mountains and biplanes.

More to come....

The Quarantine Atlas

Two years ago, at the beginning of the current pandemic, Bloomberg CityLab asked readers to map their life under quarantine. They displayed many maps, some of which were featured here on a previous blog post. Last week they published over 65 of these maps as The Quarantine Atlas.

While the publisher's page does not show any examples, there are quite a few on this Bloomberg page as well as many other maps not in the atlas. Here are a few that I like.

Tiara Lui - Hong Kong

Nice job showing the commute and pandemic disruptions to the city.

Nabilla Nur Anisah - Depok, West Java, Indonesia 

Many of the maps show floor plans of the residence as that is where people are stuck. I like this one because it contrasts the home life with the three hours of commuting to an office in South Tangerang.

Alfonso Pezzi - London transformed. Everything is delivered home including entertainment and work.

Finally here is one that did not make the atlas but I like all the intersecting geographies; floor plans, the local park, the drive to school, various road trips to nearby cities and then out to Illinois.

Carol Hsuing - Millburn, New Jersey

More Cross Stitch Maps

 One of the talks I enjoyed at this month's North American Cartographic Information Society Conference was from Kara Prior, who uses maps to create cross stitch pattern designs - on sale on her Etsy shop.

She details the process in her talk - now available on YouTube. The idea is to take a map and make it as low resolution as possible while still conveying information. That way you see the individual squares. Here is a screen shot from the video illustrating this.

One of my favorites is the bedrock geology of Arizona. The colors really jump out - some of them look like they were taken from the state's flag.

 

She also has bathymetry and watersheds as well as several other, non-map patterns. The watersheds can be quite simple such as New Jersey,

or much more complicated.

I'll end with some bathymetry examples

Witches and Ghosts

Here are some maps for your Halloween enjoyment. First, a clickable map of witches in Scotland. This is a map of the Witchcraft Survey Database, a list containing records of all of the recorded accused witches in Scotland from 1563 – 1736. There are maps showing locations of trials, deaths and detentions of accused witches.

The map can be filtered by gender, occupation and social class. You can also change the map for a more historic look.

 This Is Halloween is a project from Jonah Adkins showing locations of the two major pop-up Halloween stores in pink and green with a nice spooky font.

Zoom in and the circle become Pac Man ghosts - spooky!

Finally, Haunted NJ - via Reddit

Getting Personal at the La Jolla Map Museum

For a final post of my Spring visit to the La Jolla Map & Atlas Museum I want to spotlight a few maps that are interesting to me for various personal reasons.

Photo courtesy of the La Jolla Map & Atlas Museum

This map by William Faden shows the movements of George Washington's troops against the King's army in New Jersey in 1776 and 1777. Faden's 1777 map of Philadelphia hangs on my wall and part of it appears on the header image at the top. The New Jersey map has lots of bits of historical information but this less important detail in the southwest corner is what interests me the most.

My childhood home is at the bottom of the map, just a little south and east of Middletown (now Langhorne, but the surrounding area is still Middletown Township). We would often take the drive to Newtown to get ice cream and visit the stores. It was a nice country drive to a nice little town. Newtown is still a quaint olde towne but is now surrounded by a partial beltway and a sea of ugly (IMHO) housing developments. I like seeing this view of Pennsylvania before runaway development.

Woodblock map of Edo (Tokyo) ca 1840 from the Shogun period.

Photo taken at the La Jolla Map & Atlas Museum

I have always been fascinated with Japan and especially Tokyo. I also love woodblock maps and all the tiny details found within them.

There is a detail page on this map on the museum's web site.

I took this photo and then rotated the map, out of habit of wanting to see north up. The map is actually reverse "oriented" with west at the top. My rotation was a kind of accidental mistake but I've left it this way because it fits the blog dimensions better. Here is the description from the museum's page.

"beautiful woodblock map of Tokyo from the golden age of Japanese woodblock map printing. Combining the elements of traditional Japanese map-making: rice paper, woodblock printing, delicate application of colour, the inclusion of topographical views into the map proper, and all text seems to radiate from the centre of the map; with a more modern western-influenced directional orientation with north to the right of the image. "  

Here is a bird's-eye view of Avalon on Santa Catalina Island in southern California. I've never been there and I don't know exactly why this map speaks to me. It just looks like a warm, welcoming town nestled in among the mountains - probably with crazy high real estate prices.

Photo courtesy of the La Jolla Map & Atlas Museum

Downtown detail.

The map is surrounded by images both real and fanciful of seals, buffalo, mermaids and people having all kinds of recreational fun. Here is one showing the road signs.

This last item is of interest due to its uniqueness. It is a display case used by Folsom Brothers to sell real estate in San Diego.

The case folds closed like a suitcase to carry around. The map is a relief map showing the topography in detail.

Here is the handle just west of Point Loma