The Geography and Map Division's digital collections include digital copies of historical items in the collections, as well as more contemporary digital cartography and geospatial data. Over a million images from the historical collections are freely available online, alongside a selection of its contemporary digital materials. Strengths of the online digital collection include the Sanborn Map Collection and other fire insurance maps, county land ownership maps, real estate atlases, panoramic maps, and other building-level maps particularly of the United States, as well as military maps and cartographic material documenting European global exploration and settlement of North America. Below is a list of curated topical selections from the division's freely available digital collection. To fully explore the online digital collections, search across all online maps. Additional in-copyright digital collection materials can be viewed onsite in the Geography and Map Reading Room.
Contact reference staff via Ask a Librarian for more information about the Library's rights-restricted digital content currently available in Stacks, the primary system for accessing rights-restricted digital materials in the Library of Congress's permanent collection.
The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands
This online collection contains digitized items from the Library of Congress collection that was originally made available as The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands/De Atlantische Wereld: Amerika en Nederland digital library project, as part of the Global Gateways initiative.
Cities and Towns
This category includes maps that depict individual buildings to panoramic views of large urban areas. These maps record the evolution of cities illustrating the development and nature of economic activities, educational and religious facilities, parks, street patterns and widths, and transportation systems.
Civil War Maps
Brings together materials from three premier collections: the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia. Among the reconnaissance, sketch, and theater-of-war maps are the detailed battle maps made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss for Generals Lee and Jackson, General Sherman's Southern military campaigns, and maps taken from diaries, scrapbooks, and manuscripts all available for the first…
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program - Virginia Historical Society - Library of Virginia
Discovery and Exploration
This category documents the discovery and exploration with both manuscripts and published maps. Many of these maps reflect the European Age of Discoveries, dating from the late 15th century to the 17th century when Europeans were concerned primarily with determining the outline of the continents as they explored and mapped the coastal areas and the major waterways. Also included are 18th and 19th century…
France in America
This online collection presents digitized items from the Library of Congress collection originally made available as the France in America digital library project, a part of the Global Gateways initiative. Conceived in partnership with the Bibliothèque nationale de France, France in America /France en Amérique was launched as a bilingual digital library made available by the Library of Congress. It explored the history of…
General Maps
This category includes maps that typically portray the physical environment and a variety of cultural elements for a geographic area at a particular point in time. The maps in this category show a geographic area larger than a city or town and do not display a subject that is part of one of the thematic categories.
Geographers on Film
Geographers on Film are a collection of recorded interviews conducted with hundreds of geographers from August 1970 until the mid-1980s, which includes scholars, and cartographers who have shaped the discipline. Interviews with Carl Sauer, Richard Hartshorne, Wilbur Zelinsky, Richard Chorley, Mildred Berman, William Warntz, Waldo Tobler, John Fraser Hart, Peter Hagget, E. Cotton Mather, Yi-Fu Tuan and William Bunge, are just a few of…
Geospatial Applications
Story Maps and web maps produced at the Library of Congress utilize geospatial technology to create curated entry points into our digital collections. We invite you to explore the incredible stories of the Library’s collections through immersive narratives, multimedia, and interactive maps.
Hidden Treasures at the Library of Congress
This Week's Hidden Treasure in Partnership with HISTORY This Week's Hidden Treasure is an exciting opportunity to examine historically meaningful and culturally relevant artifacts from the treasured collections of the Library of Congress. It's a unique chance to learn more about some of the pieces of history that have shaped our nation.
Hotchkiss Map Collection
The Hotchkiss Map Collection contains cartographic items made by Major Jedediah Hotchkiss (1828-1899), a topographic engineer in the Confederate Army. Hotchkiss made detailed battle maps primarily of the Shenandoah Valley, some of which were used by the Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson for their combat planning and strategy. Several of the maps have annotations of various military officers, demonstrating their…
Jay I. Kislak Collection
The Jay I. Kislak Collection of the Archaeology and History of the Early Americas is composed of important archaeological artifacts, rare books, manuscripts, maps and graphic works of art, which survey the earliest history of the lands that would become known as the Americas. Jay I. Kislak donated the collection to the Library of Congress in 2014. The dates of the collection items range…
Louisiana: European Explorations and the Louisiana Purchase
The Louisiana Purchase is a landmark event in American history, one that had a lasting impact not only on the size of the United States, but also on its economic, cultural, and political makeup. Before President Thomas Jefferson's administration purchased the territory in 1803, parts or all of the territory had been under the control of various Native American nations. From the 16th century…
Mapping the National Parks
This collection documents the history, cultural aspects and geological formations of areas that eventually became National Parks. The collection consists of approximately 200 maps dating from the 17th century to the present, reflecting early mapping of the areas that would become four National Parks, as well as the parks themselves. Production of this collection is being supported by a generous gift from The Rockefeller…
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Maps of Liberia, 1830-1870
This collection of Liberia maps includes twenty examples from the American Colonization Society (ACS), organized in 1817 to resettle free black Americans in West Africa. These maps show early settlements in Liberia, indigenous political subdivisions, and some of the building lots that were assigned to settlers. This on-line presentation also includes other nineteenth-century maps of Liberia: a map prepared for a book first published…
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program - American Colonization Society
Military Battles and Campaigns
This category contains maps showing campaigns of major military conflicts including troop movements, defensive structures and groundworks, roads to and from sites of military engagements, campsites, and local buildings, topography and vegetation. Some of the maps are manuscripts drawn on the field of battle, while others are engraved including some that have manuscript annotations reflecting the history of the battle or campaign. A significant…
Panoramic Maps
The panoramic map was a popular cartographic form used to depict U.S. and Canadian cities and towns during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Known also as bird's-eye views, perspective maps, and aero views, panoramic maps are nonphotographic representations of cities portrayed as if viewed from above at an oblique angle. Although not generally drawn to scale, they show street patterns, individual buildings,…
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division - Hébert, John R. - Dempsey, Patrick E. (Patrick Eugene)
Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier
This online collection contains books, maps, prints and photographs, manuscripts, and other documents from the Library of Congress collection that was originally made available as Parallel Histories: Spain, the United States, and the American Frontier/Historias Paralelas: España, Estados Unidos, y la Frontera Americana, as part of the Global Gateways initiative.
Railroad Maps, 1828-1900
Contains 623 maps chosen from more than 3,000 railroad maps and about 2,000 regional, state, and county maps, and other maps which show "internal improvements" of the past century. The maps presented here are a selection from the Geography and Map Division holdings, based on the popular cartobibliography, Railroad Maps of the United States: A Selective Annotated Bibliography of Original 19th-century Maps in the…
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Rochambeau Map Collection
The collection consists of 40 manuscript and 26 printed maps, and a manuscript atlas, the originals of which are in the Library of Congress' Geography and Map Division.
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program
Sanborn Maps
The Sanborn Maps Collection Advanced Search provides a searchable database of the fire insurance maps published by the Sanborn Map Company housed in the collections of the Geography and Map Division. The online checklist is based upon the Library's 1981 publication Fire Insurance Maps in the Library of Congress and will be continually updated to reflect new acquisitions.
Single Sheet Maps, Title Collection
The Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress holds over 1.5 million single-sheet maps. Many of the single-sheet maps that were received by the Geography and Map Division before the advent of machine-readable cataloging in 1968 have been cataloged at a collection level instead of an individual sheet level. They are filed by geographic location. This portion of the Geography and Map Division's collections…
Transportation and Communication
These maps document the development and status of transportation and communication systems on the national, state, and local level. Transportation maps can depict canal and river systems, cycling routes, railway lines and systems, roads and road networks, and traffic patterns. Communication maps illustrate the location and distribution of telegraph routes, telephone systems and radio coverage.
The United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures
This online collection contains digitized items from the Library of Congress collection that was originally made available as The United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures/Brasil e Estados Unidos: Expandindo Fronteiras, Comparando Culturas, as part of the Global Gateways initiative.
World War II Military Situation Maps
This collection contains maps showing troop positions beginning on June 6, 1944 to July 26, 1945. Starting with the D-Day Invasion, the maps give daily details on the military campaigns in Western Europe, showing the progress of the Allied Forces as they push towards Germany. Some of the sheets are accompanied by a declassified "G-3 Report" giving detailed information on troop positions for the…
Contributor:
Library of Congress. Geography and Map Division - Library of Congress. National Digital Library Program - Allied Forces. Army Group, 12th. Engineer Section - United States. Army. Army Group, 1st. Headquarters
