K9APE’S BOOKSHELF

CARTOGRAPHICICA EXTRAORDINAIRE

The Historical Map Transformed

David Rumsey & Edith M. Punt

ISBN 1-58948-04409

Cartographica Extraordinarie is a coffee-table book featuring selections from the David Rumsey Map Collection. It provides an illustrated history of the evolution of Western Hemisphere maps from 1731 to 2002. Beginning with a 1731 three-inch globe of the World in which California is shown as an island, the book gracefully guides through advances in cartography such as a colonial map of Boston morphed into a color aerial photograph of central Boston (the cover) and a 1714 map of the Lewis & Clark expedition morphed over an aerial photographic mosaic of the Louisiana Purchase (pp.24-25).

Beyond cartography, there is much history to be studied and admired. For example, the Land Ordinance of 1785 – written by Thomas Jefferson et al – is described and illustrated (pp. 30 et seq.). The Public Land Survey System that it established unifies land surveys in the United States and its six-mile-square contiguous sections are still the basis for metes and bounds legal descriptions in almost all areas of our country. Examples of maps of Illinois from 1820, when there were only nineteen counties, to 1874, when all 102 counties were established and mapped (pp. 54 -57) and a farmland map or 1876 (pp. 58-59) illustrate how the System worked in Illinois. The development of the Erie Canal is shown (pp. 91-93)

The book concludes with an interesting technical description of the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection that Rumsey built in his San Francisco home. It houses more than 150,000 fully cataloged items. For those interested in learning more about the Collection, please see www.davidrumsey.com.

The book was published by ESRI Press. ESRI is the developer of ARC^® Geographic Information System (GIS) and mapping software that many consider to be a gold standard in modern mapping software. Please see www.esri.com for links to fascinating examples of new uses for mapping technology. One example is the FCC’s Universal Licensing System GIS website (http://wireless2.fcc.gov/ULSGis/ULSearchGis.jsp). Another is the Cook County GIS website (http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/nsdihome/webdocs/doqs/county/cook.html) where you can obtain an aerial photograph of your neighborhood.

Sheldon L. Epstein, K9APE