Historic Maps

Road maps show us where we're going and historic road maps show us where we've been and how we got there. 

These early Arizona road maps were vital guides to have on board at the dawn of the automobile age more than a century ago. That was long before our digital maps and GPS guided us on our trips. 

Over several decades in the 20th century, states and gasoline companies recognized how important road maps were for commerce and tourism and they invested in making maps attractive and readily available for free. 

This beautiful cover art for the Arizona highway maps was a marketing tool that helped sell the state as a destination for motorists. 

These are snapshots of maps in the collection of the Map and Geospatial Hub within the Arizona State University Library.

Editor's note:  This page is a work in progress and we hope to get better scans of these maps and illustrations.
See Best Arizona Place Names: 
http://www.ontheroadarizona.com/placenames.html

This Arizona highway map is nearly a century old. It was published in December 1919.

A highway map from 1942.

A Conoco highway map from the 1940s.

This is a corner of a 1920s map.

This is an 1857 map of what would become the Arizona Territory. Note that this was Apache country.