Pondering Alabama Maps (7): October 2, 1866

I stumbled across this map in my random wanderings around the web and found it interesting. On the bottom right is noted "Department of Interior/General Land Office, October 2, 1866" thus making the map seem to be a snapshot of the state on a particular day. Perhaps that's actually the date the map was finished and ready for printing.

Published in Philadelphia, the map has an abundance of information about the state at that time. In Jefferson County the only town we see is Elyton, the county seat until moved to Birmingham in 1873 just seven years later. At the bottom is this note:  "The whole central region of this state is underlaid with iron ore, in vast beds. There are also coal measures of great thickness and extent. Lead ore is also found." 

In east central Alabama along the Georgia line we see Benton County. Created in 1832, the county was named after Missouri senator and defender of slavery Thomas Hart Benton. In the 1850's Benton became an opponent of slavery, and the name was changed to honor secessionist John C. Calhoun. 

North of Walker County is Hancock County. Established in 1850 from a part of Walker County, the name originally honored the famous signer of the Declaration of Independence John Hancock. The name was eventually changed to Winston after state governor John A. Winston.  

At the time this map was created Alabama had entered the Reconstruction period. 

Source: Library of Congress 

Pondering Alabama Maps (5): An 1867 Railroad Map

 

The wordy title of this map is "Map showing the line of the Alabama & Tennessee River Rail Road and its proposed extensions; exhibiting also the contiguous mineral deposits and zone of production". The dark blue line indicates the existing railroad; the dark green lines are proposed extensions.

The company had incorporated in March 1848 under an act of the Alabama legislature. By 1862 about 135 miles of the line ran from Selma to Blue Mountain and toward Dalton, Georgia. By February 1867, after acts of both the Alabama and Georgia legislatures, the line was merged with one in Georgia to become the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad. By 1894 the road had become part of the Southern Railroad Company.

Digital versions of this map in various sizes/formats can be found at the Library of Congress web site.

A very good history is Wayne Cline's book Alabama Railroads. 

Pondering Alabama Maps (4): Early State Road Maps

In the first three installments of this series I looked at the city of Pelham on some old maps. Why Pelham, you ask? I live there, silly! Now let's look at some early statewide road maps. 

One of the earliest Alabama road maps is surely the 1914 one below, which can be found at UA's Alabama Historical Maps collection. Below the state map is a detailed look at roads in Shelby, Bibb, Chilton and Autauga counties. This map was drawn by civil engineer and draftsman H.E. Anschutz under the direction of W.S. Keller and R.P. Boyd, State Highway Engineer and his assistant respectively. 

UPDATE on 2 July 2015: Historian Martin Olliff recently pointed out to me that W.S. Keller was Helen Keller's half-brother.

Notice anything interesting in the detail from Mr. Anschutz's creation?? That's right--in all this spaghetti, none of the roads have names or number designations. You'll find the same thing on the 1924 map in the digital collection. 

Now let's take a look at the state's 1925 road map:

And here's a zoom of the Selma-Clanton-Montgomery area:

Now we see some numbers on these roads. At first they seem like mileage numbers, but that doesn't work out. These numbers are the early highway designations in Alabama. 

No draftsman is identified prominently on this 1925 map, although I suspect we find his name in the lower right corner: D.E. Shields and the year 1924. 

In the next installment I'd like to continue by looking at some more state road maps from the 1920's and into the 1930's.

A fascinating history of the early "good roads" movement in Alabama is Martin Olliff's "Getting on the Map: Alabama's Good Roads Pathfinding Campaigns, 1911-1912" in the Alabama Review 2015 January; 68(1): 3-30.

Pondering an Alabama Map (3): Pelham in 1928

This map is the third one I've discussed that shows the tiny community of Pelham. The previous maps were issued in 1917 and 1926. All three full maps can be seen in UA's wonderful Historical Maps of Alabama collection.

Now we come to an Alabama highway map issued by the state highway department. Issued in the fall of 1928, the map was created and published by the General Drafting Company of New York City. Founded in 1909, the company operated for many decades.

On the portion of the map shown below, we can see many familiar towns, from Brighton and Bessemer to Brierfield and Childersburg. U.S. Highway 31 already provides a north-south artery. 

The most current state map shows highway 25, but no highway 62. I could not find state highways 3 or 5 either. No doubt renaming of roads has occurred often in the decades since 1928.

You can still find Simmsville on the current map, east of Indian Springs Village which of course did not exist in 1928. Calcis, a former mining town, is also shown. But Newala, Shannon and Underwood have all disappeared from the state's latest highway map. Shannon was a mining town named after John Shannon who operated a mine there before World War I, according to Virginia Foscue's book Place Names in Alabama. Foscue notes that Underwood was named for a family that settled there in the 1830s. She has no entry for Newala. 

This post concludes the series on Pelham's appearance on three maps early in the twentieth century. Next time I'll take a look more generally at state highway maps.

 A fascinating history of the early "good roads" movement in Alabama is Martin Olliff's "Getting on the Map: Alabama's Good Roads Pathfinding Campaigns, 1911-1912" in the Alabama Review 2015 January; 68(1): 3-30.

Pondering an Alabama Map (2): Pelham in 1926

Our map this time is a 1926 road map of Shelby County. I found this map in UA's Historical Maps Collection among various maps of the county.

The map was one of many official county road maps completed by the Whitson Map & Blueprint Co. of Birmingham beginning in the 1920s. The company's namesake was Bethel W. Whitson. This map was created by E.A. Turner, presumably a Whitson employee.

Whitson's company is listed in the 1945 Birmingham Yellow Pages under "Maps". Located at 108 1/2 North 21st Street, the firm's phone number was 4-2606. 

Whitson and his family appeared in the 1940 US Census living at 1061 Lakeview Crescent in the City. In addition to his wife Mabel and two daughters, Whitson's mother-in-law and brother-in-law also lived in the household. Whitson was 42 at that time. According to Bhamwiki, the surveyor and cartographer had worked at the Electric Blue Printing Company before starting his own firm. 

The portion of the map shown here includes Pelham and some surrounding towns. In addition to Pelham, we see current towns like Helena, Saginaw, Maylene and "Alabasta". Other towns such as Roebuck, Straven, Siluria, Kestone and Longview have been absorbed by subsequent growth of Pelham and others.

You can read a little more about Keystone in a previous post on this blog. Maybe I'll look into the history of some of the other places in future posts. And just when did "Alabasta" become Alabaster, anyway??

Next map up for pondering: a 1928 map showing Pelham and surrounding area. Then I'll move on to a look at official Alabama highway maps. 

Pondering an Alabama Map (1): Pelham in 1917

        A great resource for anyone interested in Alabama maps is the online Historical Map Archive at the University of Alabama, which draws on map collections from various libraries and archives around the state. I've recently been exploring many of the maps there and would like to highlight some on a regular basis on this blog. 

The two images below are taken from a 1917 soil survey map of Shelby County from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The National Cooperative Soil Survey began in 1899 and continues today; maps have been issued for counties in every state. The surveys are a cooperative effort of governmental and private agencies to study and publish information about soils in the U.S.

On this map we can see near Pelham familiar features such as Little Oak Ridge and the Cahaba River, the railroad to Birmingham and Helena to the west. If you really zoom in around the word “Pelham”, you can see a few structures of the town, three of which have crosses to indicate churches.

Still to come are Pelham’s appearances on a 1926 road map of Shelby County and a 1928 state highway map. After those maps I'll move on to some of the other riches in this collection.

Unless otherwise noted, maps discussed in this series are available via the online Historical Maps Archive based at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.