De Wit 1672 [Osher Collection]

Current Exhibition:

American Treasures
October 18, 2009 - August 21, 2010

American Treasures celebrates the reopening of the newly renovated and expanded Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education at the University of Southern Maine. It explores the library’s rich and varied collections and its mission to preserve those collections and make them accessible. Beginning with the foundational gifts by the Smith and Osher families, the library’s collections emphasize Maine and New England, followed in order by the United States, the Americas, and the (continued)

Raod Atlases

(click on image to view in greater detail)

Rand McNally Special Auto Road Atlas of the United States and Eastern Canada. Chicago, San Francisco, New York: Rand McNally & Company, 1929.

Raod Atlases

By the 1920s, commercial publishers such as Rand McNally had dropped the text almost completely from the guides to produce the modern road atlas. Indeed, Rand McNally is synonymous with large-format road atlases [97]. First published in 1925, these atlases still have a similar form today. Yet, Rand McNally was not alone: Hammond and Gallup produced their own road atlases, each with its own identifiable characteristics [98, 99]; Clason offered an atlas featuring spectacular cover graphics that seemed particularly suited to the West [100]; Jenney issued a free Eastern equivalent with covers in Art Deco style [101].