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Deep in hallowed halls of Tisch Library lies a vestige of the pre-internet age: the map room. Before this week, I had no clue we had a map room, and I feel pretty confident most Tufts students felt the same way.

The map room is exactly what it sounds like, a room full of thousands of maps meticulously sorted by type, year, and location within the United States. There were easily 50 drawers for gargantuan California while tiny Rhode Island barely made a full shelf. Now that all of the maps are available and regularly updated online, Tisch is looking into increasing their digital mapping abilities by repurposing the map room to create a better space for active learning.

After deciding how to use the room most successfully, the big question for Tisch became what to do with all of the maps that were no longer (physically) necessary. Those that held historical value were offered to local historical societies and public libraries (Boston Public Library took 3 cases!), but that still left Tisch with hundreds of maps.  They went to the next massive source of topographically interested individuals: Tufts students.

Within minutes on day one of the map room being open for free maps, there was a horde of at least 40 people shuffling through decades worth of historical topographic maps. Many went in looking for their home towns, others for gifts for their friends and family, and some just went in hoping to find a cool geological feature in Nevada or Montana. Either way, students went nuts for these maps. For at least a week it was impossible to cross campus without seeing at least one student holding a rolled up piece of paper under their arm which almost certainly came from the map room.

The first day was too chaotic to take pictures (plus I had to find some maps of my own) but I went back on day 3 around lunch time to grab some pictures of students sorting through a nation’s worth of geological history.

You can check out some of the incredible research projects students have been involved in this past year using the maps here or feel free to do your own research using the actual maps dating back to the 1800s here!  Have you discovered something cool about your hometown? Is there a city that you’ve located that you can watch grow into its modern strength using the different map years? Share it with us in the comments!