MSU Map Library: Links to Useful Sites: Historical

Historic maps scanned in high resolution. You may interact with them on the screen or download them in high resolution.

This large repository of maps and charts primarily consists of nautical charts (waterways) of US coastal areas and the Great Lakes and aeronautical charts (airspace) of the US. Images are downloadable as high res jpgs.

Several thousand scanned historic maps of the world, with some emphasis on the Americas.

This database contains approximately 1,200 U.S. county land ownership atlases from the Library of Congress’ Geography and Maps division, covering the years 1860-1918. The original microfilms have recently been rescanned to improve image quality and legibility where possible. These maps can be searched by State, County, Year, Owner's name, or a combination of these elements.

This collection includes maps of townships in all or parts of Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Washington, and Wisconsin. A typical plat map will cover one township, and the usual scale is two inches = one mile. There can be multiple plats associated with a single township. For some states both the local office copy and the copy that was sent to the Government Land Office in Washington, D.C. are included.

The Green Book often provided information on local tourist homes, which were private residences owned by blacks and open to travelers. It was especially helpful to blacks that traveled through sunset towns (towns that publicly stated that blacks had to leave the town by sundown or it would be cause for arrest). Also listed were hotels, barbershops, beauty salons, restaurants, garages, liquor stores, ball parks and taverns. It also provided a listing of the white-owned, black-friendly locations

The Atlas presents GIS data, maps and text complete data about the creation and all subsequent changes in the size, shape, and location of every county in the fifty United States and the District of Columbia. It also includes non-county areas, unsuccessful authorizations for new counties, changes in names, and the temporary attachments of unorganized counties. The principal sources for these data include the session laws of the colonies, territories, and states.

Several thousand scanned historic maps of the world, with some emphasis on the Americas.

The OldMapsOnline Portal is an easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world, including the David Rumsey collection. It allows the user to search for online digital historical maps across numerous different collections via a geographical search. Search by typing a place-name or by clicking in the map window, and narrow by date. The search results provide a direct link to the map image on the website of the host institution.

Large collection of scanned maps, including a lot of general reference maps from the CIA.

This site offers 2,500 digital reproductions of historical maps mainly of Europe, North Africa, and East Asia. Emphasis is on historical topographic map sets. Maps may be viewed online in great detail, but may only be downloaded by purchase. CartoMundi also offers a much larger catalog of map records, over 35,000 records, to help scholars identify maps of interest (but are not viewable online at that site).

Maps of the Caribbean from 1507 through 2010. Includes some JOBs and modern topographic maps. You may zoom in and see great detail, but there are no saving options.

This site features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid 16th Century to the early 20th Century. All scanned maps are authentic and originally collected by the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies (or the Africana Library) at Northwestern University. Images are not available for download.

This collection contains 4,200 maps from the 16th to the 19th century.

This website contains 5,000 antique maps of Africa. Maps may be viewed on the screen only, there is no downloading capability. The interface requires Adobe Flash.