Big North Carolina maps collection now available online

I know that for the last few days all the maps you've been looking at have had snowfall estimates on them, so here's something to clear your palate -- a partnership between the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources State Archives and UNC-Chapel Hill. It's the North Carolina Maps Web site and it's available at http://www.lib.unc.edu/dc/ncmaps/ .

This collection currently holds over 700 maps dating from the 1600s to the 1960s and will eventually hold over 1500 maps. There are several ways to browse through the maps, including by date, type, subject, or even creator. I decided to browse by county and looked for the Wake County maps. There are 14 maps in the collection that have Wake County as their primary focus. They span 1832 to 1944.

The maps search results include a thumbnail, title, date published, publisher, and repository. The maps span the entire county or a very small area indeed (an Oakwood Cemetery map from 1869.)

There's also a city of Raleigh map from 1847 here. I clicked on it and got a slightly larger version of the map along with a lot of detail including full description and names of streets on the maps, repository details and even latitude and longitude (!!) You can zoom in on the map images and pan around. This map has what we consider to be downtown Raleigh, with streets, with housing areas divided into one-acre lots. There are also owner names denoted on the lots.

Looking at Raleigh over 150 years ago made me nostalgic for more historical information, so I went and took a look at the Historical Overlays section. Here you can place historic maps on current Google maps. Current overlays available include Fayetteville in 1825, the Cherokee Nation in 1884, and an NC Highway map from 1936.

There are other features on this site, too, including resources for K-12 teachers and students, a timeline, and some additional external resources related to North Carolina maps. Do you have any North Carolina history? You'll love this site.