LibGuides: U.S. History: Images &amp; Maps

Recommended Map Databases

African American Studies Center
Center notes over 1,000 images, over 100 maps, over 200 charts and tables digitally available
American West
1722 - 1939. Unlimited users. Provides access to source materials on the development of the American West. Contains a wide range of documents, including original manuscripts, ephemeral material (trade cards, wanted posters, photos, claim certificates, news-sheets etc), maps, and rare printed works.
Access to this resource is funded by the Emily Knauss Library Endowment for the Liberal Arts.
Search across Adam Matthew primary source databases using AM Explorer
Digital Sanborn Maps 1867-1970
1867 - 1970. Unlimited users. A collection of large-scale, detailed maps from 1867-1970 depicting the commercial, industrial, and residential sections of more than 12,000 U.S. towns and cities. The available states on our site are: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
GeoRef
1785 - present. Unlimited users. Covers the geology of North America from 1785 to the present. Contains references to geoscience journal articles, books, maps, conference papers, reports and theses.
Nineteenth (19th) Century Collections Online
1801 - 1900. Unlimited users. It consists of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.
Social Explorer
1790 - present. Unlimited users. Provides easy access to historical census data for the United States. Allows users to visually analyze and understand the demography of any part of the United States including access to interactive thematic maps of historical census data
Texas Historic Sites Atlas
Features nearly 300,000 site records, including data on Official Texas Historical Markers and National Register of Historic Places properties in Texas. Get instant access to detailed textual descriptions, historic photographs, and interactive maps to help you discover what makes Texas and your areas of interest unique.

Recommended Databases for Images

Ad*Access
Presents images and database information for over 7,000 advertisements printed in U.S. and Canadian newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. Concentrates on five main subject areas: Radio, Television, Transportation, Beauty and Hygiene, and World War II, providing a coherent view of a number of major campaigns and companies through images.
ARTstor
Comprised of over 2.5 million digital images of visual material encompassing artistic and historical traditions across many time periods and cultures. Focuses on, but is not limited to, the arts. Includes architecture, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, and design as well as many other forms of visual culture.
Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850-1920
1850 - 1920. Unlimited users. Presents over 9,000 images, with database information, relating to the early history of advertising in the United States.
Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey
1933 - present. Unlimited users. The Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) collections are among the largest and most heavily used in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. The collections document achievements in architecture, engineering, and landscape design in the United States and its territories through a comprehensive range of building types, engineering technologies, and landscapes.
Images of the American Civil War
Presents 50,000 contemporaneous photographs, including nearly 30,000 wartime recruiting posters, envelopes, and ephemera.
LANTERN SLIDES OF THE NIPPON RIKKOKAI: Japanese Immigrants to Americas (力行会海外日本人移民関係幻燈資料)
19th - 20th century. Unlimited users. The main images of the 179 lantern slides at this site are lives of those immigrants to Americas, mainly to Brazil, in late 19th and early 20th century.

Look Collection
With Look Magazine's coverage of U.S. and international lifestyles, celebrities, and events, the collection offers insight into the magazine's photojournalistic documentation of aspects of society and culture--particularly American society and culture--in the middle decades of the twentieth century.

National Geographic Magazine Archive, 1888-2020
1888 - 1994. Unlimited users. Browse by issue or search for articles and images.
North American Indian Thought and Culture
1677 - present. Unlimited users. A collection of biographical material of American Indians and Canadian First Peoples in their own words and through the words of others. The collection includes at least 20,000 photographs from the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Edward Curtis, and many rare collections.
Runyon Photograph Collection
This collection of over 8,000 items is a unique visual resource documenting the Lower Rio Grande Valley during the early 1900s. It includes glass negatives, lantern slides, nitrate negatives, prints, and postcards, representing the life's work of commercial photographer Robert Runyon (1881-1968), a longtime resident of South Texas. His photographs document the history and development of South Texas and the border, including the Mexican Revolution, the U.S. military presence at Ft. Brown and along the border prior to and during World War I, and the growth and development of the Rio Grande Valley.
Vogue Archive
1892 - present. Unlimited users. Every page, advertisement, cover and fold-out has been included, with rich indexing enabling you to find images by garment type, designer and brand names.

PCL Map Collection - Online

Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection
Browse the PCL Map Collection online for maps.
Maps from other websites
An extensive list of other map websites.
Library of Congress American Memory Project
Provides free and open access to still and moving images, maps, among other resources that document the American experience.

Open Access Maps

American Panorama - a historical atlas of the United States for the twenty-first century. It combines cutting-edge research with innovative interactive mapping techniques, designed to appeal to anyone with an interest in American history or a love of maps.

American Revolutionary War Era Maps (1750-1800) - a curated digital collection of maps and additional online resources related to the American Revolutionary War era, broadly defined as 1750-1800. Nearly 2,000 maps are currently available in the Portal

Civil War Maps - Approximately 3,000 maps from collections owned by the Library of Congress, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia.

David Rumsey Map Collection - over 55,000 maps and images online. The collection focuses on rare 18th and 19th century North American and South American maps and other cartographic materials.

Old Maps Online - OldMapsOnline Portal is an easy-to-use gateway to historical maps in libraries around the world.

Credit

Thank you to the Hunter College Library U.S. History Guide