Research Guides: Maps: Historical Maps

Sanborn Maps of Arkansas

The Sanborn Map Company was the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years. The maps provide block-by-block coverage of detailed information about historical buildings. Construction material is indicated, and information such as building function and locations of water and gas mains are available in some cases.

Print Sanborn Maps

Special Collections has 8 color Sanborn maps of Fayetteville, for 1886, 1892, 1897, 1904, 1908, 1913, 1919, and 1930. Because of their size, fragility, and value, use of these originals is restricted. Use the digital collection as an alternative whenever possible. We also have Sanborn Maps of Arkansas in black and white on two sets of microfilm in Multimedia Services.

Sanborn Digital Maps for Arkansas This link opens in a new window
Founded in 1867, the Sanborn Map Company was the primary American publisher of fire insurance maps for nearly 100 years. Sanborn fire insurance maps provide block-by-block coverage for historical buildings. Construction material is indicated by color, and information such as building function and locations of water and gas mains are available in some cases.

Historical GIS Data

Atlas of Historical County Boundaries
What it sounds like. Get spatial data showing historical county boundaries and track changes through time.
National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS)
"The National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS) provides, free of charge, aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary files for the United States between 1790 and 2010."
Antiquity À-la-carte
"The Antiquity À-la-carte application is an interactive digital map of the ancient world." You can export maps as .kml or .json files, and data as .xls files.

Historical Attribute Data/Statistics

Historical Census Data Browser
"Examine state and county topics for individual census years", going back to 1790. This data can be downloaded and joined to spatial data in a GIS for analysis.

Other Historical Maps of Arkansas

Arkansas State Highway and Transportation Department Maps
State, county, and city highway and street maps as well as historical county maps, state, county, and city annual average daily traffic maps, and a state map with county outlines and names. Nearly all map images are of Tagged Image Format (TIF).
Plat Maps
City of Fayetteville Interactive Maps
Find flood maps, historical imagery, land records, land use data, utilities, wards, zoning and more.
Arkansas Historical Topographic Maps (University of Texas)
Pre-1945 topographic maps of Arkansas.
Library of Congress Digital Collections: Maps
Digitized maps from the collections of the Library of Congress. "The focus of Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection."
David Rumsey Map Collection - Arkansas
This "collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North American and South American maps and other cartographic materials."
Historical Soil Survey Maps of Arkansas
From the University of Alabama.
Historical Maps of Arkansas
From the University of Alabama.

General Historical Maps

David Rumsey Historical Map Collection
"The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North American and South American maps and other cartographic materials. Historic maps of the World, Europe, Asia, and Africa are also represented.

Popular collection categories include antique atlas, globe, school geography, maritime chart, state, county, city, pocket, wall & case, children's, and manuscript maps."
Perry-Castaneda Library Map Collection
More than 250,000 contemporary and historical maps from all over the globe. From the University of Texas at Austin.
Library of Congress Digital Collections: Maps
Digitized maps from the collections of the Library of Congress. "The focus of Map Collections is Americana and Cartographic Treasures of the Library of Congress. These images were created from maps and atlases and, in general, are restricted to items that are not covered by copyright protection."
HyperCities
Explore the historical footprints and growth of cities over the centuries through superimposed layers of historical maps.
Historic Cities
"This site contains maps, literature, documents, books and other relevant material concerning the past, present and future of historic cities and facilitates the location of similar content on the web."
Historical USGS Topographic Maps
Find historical USGS topos going back 125 years. The site offers more than 141,000 GeoPDF maps of the approximate total of 180,000 and the online collection is growing.
Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
Maps the entire extent of ancient Roman and Greek civilization through space and time.

Historical Place Names

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
Find historical place names. Particularly useful for place names associated with the arts.
Pleiades
"Springing from the Classical Atlas Project and the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, Pleiades is a historical gazetteer and more. It associates names and locations in time and provides structured information about the quality and provenance of these entities. There is also a graph in Pleiades: names and locations are collected within places and these collections are associated with other geographically connected places."
ShtetlSeeker
Use the JewishGen Communities Database to find information on over 6,000 Jewish communities in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, together with Jewish population figures, historical town names and jurisdictions, inset maps.