Monthly Archives: December 2009

Festive cheer is upon us, and some of it is even permeating this blog. But what does Christmas have to do with cartography? Well, there is Christmas Island – three of them, in fact, one of which was discussed here … Continue reading →

Crossing the bridge over the Saint John River from Clair (New Brunswick) into Fort Kent (Maine), you arrive at the northern terminus of US Route 1. Its number reflects the fact that it is the easternmost of the north-south highways … Continue reading →

As discussed before on this blog, electoral maps have a strange tendency to transmit more than the results of a political horse-race. They often serve as quirky memorials of ancient cultural borders, as suggested in the following cases: France’s 2007 … Continue reading →

  A few miles northwest of the small town of Minden, in the seemingly endless Nebraska plains, lies a field shaped like the state itself. By intelligent design or as an accident of agriculture?  Either option seems unlikely in a landscape so utilitarian that efficiency has … Continue reading →

Leo Belgicus by Petrus Kaerius (1617), copied from the original design by Michael Aitzinger. Image taken here from the website of the Sanderus map shop in Ghent.   Lions are not native to the Low Countries, but here is one … Continue reading →