“Road Maps: The American Way” Opens at Osher Map Library

Transportation maps, depicting everything from the legendary Route 66 to the evolution of Baxter State Park, will be showcased in “Road Maps: the American Way,” the new exhibit at USM’s Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education.
The Osher Map Library is located on the first floor of USM’s Glickman Family Library, Forest Ave., Portland. The exhibit runs through December 20. Call 780-4850 for hours, or check out the Osher Map Library’s Web site at www.usm.maine.edu/maps.

The exhibit officially opens on Tuesday, February 13 with a reception at 6 p.m., followed by a 6:30 p.m. slide lecture by Robert French of Tenants Harbor. French, a retired associate professor of geography at the University of Southern Maine, is an expert on transportation-related maps and a volunteer archivist at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. His presentation will take place on the fourth floor of USM’s Glickman Family Library, Portland. The opening lecture and exhibit are free and open to the public.
Though long neglected, road maps have come into their own as highly prized collectibles. “Road Maps: the American Way” recalls the early days of the nation’s developing transportation network with bicycle maps, trolley maps, road atlases, and related artifacts, most of which are taken from the first half of the 20th century.

The exhibit also will feature a special section devoted to Route 66 and the popular song by Bobby Troup that immortalized it. The song, which was recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio, the Andrews Sisters and the Rolling Stones, among many others, is commemorated in a 1946 AAA map embellished with snapshots and the cover of the song sheet. The Osher Map Library is grateful to the Troup Estate for permission to use copies of the map and other song lyrics.

The exhibit also includes a section tracing the evolution of Baxter State Park as it appeared in a series of Maine Official Highway Maps, issued between 1934 and 2000.
“The familiar oil company road maps may soon be replaced by mobile global positioning systems,” notes French, “so it’s fun and educational to trace the development of our transportation system through the largely American innovation of the automobile road map.”

The Osher Map Library with its Smith Center for Cartographic Education features more than 60,000 maps, as separate sheets or bound in books and atlases. The collections include a 1493 copy of a letter by Christopher Columbus, a 1475 hand-colored map of the Holy Land, a 1614 map of New England featuring the only known portrait of Captain John Smith, and a land survey by George Washington.