If you doubt the fun of this map site, click this one.
I came across many of the maps you’ll see on the Big Map Blog while doing research for a film I’m working on. While searching, I found thousands of old, beautiful maps that are sadly being kept from the public that deserves them — sometimes by clumsy or unwieldy government ftp sites, and other times by archives with steep fees for research, and steeper fees for reproduction. I felt strongly that something should be done about this.
I’m a big fan of maps, and always have been. My undergraduate (Read: “only”) degree was in Geography; I studied cartography and geographic information science. I had the tools and expertise, I had the archival access, and I figured there’d be no excuse for me not to put these maps back in your hands.
I follow many terriffic map blogs, some of which you’ll see linked in this website’s footer. As good as they are — and I assure you that there are many out there who write much more lucid and engaging prose about cartography than I do [ex.01, ex.02, ex.03] — there’s always been two things I wanted from a map blog, and rarely got: A.) enormous maps, and B.) access to the full-resolution file.
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 