Maps are often beautiful illustrations of our history, the human-environmental interaction, and natural features of our state and its communities. Maps record settlement patterns, political boundaries, transportation routes, and land ownership. Maps contain invaluable information for historians, genealogists, and citizens.
The resources in this collection are historical maps of Indiana, its counties and cities, from the collections at Indiana University. Efforts were made to represent various areas of our state, but selection was based on G. K. Hall and Co.'s Checklist of Printed Maps of the Middle West to 1900 Volume 3 covering the state of Indiana. The Checklist was a cooperative project involving several institutions. Its purpose was to identify and catalog cartographic materials published prior to 1900. The collection attempts to not duplicate other digital projects, such as the Library of Congress's American Memory Project or the David Rumsey Map Collection projects. Additional maps will be added to the collection as we develop partnerships with libraries around the state.
The collection was digitized by IU Indianapolis University Library according to the standards recommended by the Indiana Digital Library Summit, with funds provided through the Indiana State Library's LSTA mini-grant program for development of the Indiana Digital Library. Most of the maps were made available for digitization from Map Collections at Indiana University Bloomington.
