Click image for larger view (640 x 564) or here for a close up (1500 x 1321). A key to trails and historical markers appears below each map image.

We recently spruced up the Making of Ann Arbor site with a new design and some additional content, including a map of Indian trails in Washtenaw County taken from the 1927 book The Indians of Washtenaw County, Michigan by W. B. Hinsdale. This map and others are available on the Making of Ann Arbor maps page. Additional maps and atlases of Washtenaw county are available through the Michigan County Histories and Atlases digitization project.

Want to know more about your house? Then you need the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. These indispensable tools for historical cartographic research were created by the Sanborn Map and Publishing Company to help fire insurance companies find who they needed to bill and what they needed to pay, they now serve as an important record of America's urbanization.

The maps cover some 12,000 cities and towns across the country and were published from 1867 to 1970. Many libraries and historical societies will carry maps of their surrounding areas. The Ann Arbor District Library has copies (on micro film) for Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester, Milan, Saline, and Ypsilanti (with dates from 1884 to 1948). They can be found in the micro film drawers (2nd floor, way behind the periodicals desk).

In an effort to further awareness of the Darfur genocide, which has killed an estimated 400,000 people and created 2 million refugees, Google Earth, in partnership with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, has produced the Grisis in Darfur initiative. Google Earth has been updated to include recent images of the Darfur region of Sudan; paired with downloadable interactive features this enables users to view in stunning detail over 1,600 destroyed villages, zoom in on over 133,000 structures that have been burned, and view pictures and video that have been uploaded from specific geographic locations. You can download Darfur layers for Google Earth from USHMM directly by clicking here, as well as browse those created by the American Association for the Advancement of Science by clicking here. To learn more about Darfur take a look at the Human Rights Watch resources Darfur Destroyed and Crisis in Darfur, or the Wikipedia entry on the Darfur Conflict.

The Michigan State University libraries have mounted another stellar online history exhibit, Footpaths to Freeways: The Evolution of Michigan Roadmaps. The exhibit traces how roads have been depicted on Michigan maps from the time it was a territory to the present. In addition to maps, it includes photographs, unique short-lived route guides and artifacts. Visit the physical exhibit in the MSU Main Library, 4th Floor West Wing Exhibit Cases March - June 2007.