Map Resources

Digital Sanborn® Maps (1867-1970) delivers detailed property and land-use records that depict the grid of everyday life in U.S. towns and cities across a century of change. Produced for over a century, more than 660,000 Sanborn maps chart the growth and development of more than 12,000 American towns and cities. Sanborn maps are large-scale plans of a city or town, drawn at a scale of 50 feet to an inch. They were created to assist fire insurance companies as they assessed the risk associated with insuring a particular property. The maps list street blocks and building numbers including numbers in use at the time the map was made and previous numbers. Users can browse by state to locate communities and editions. Once displayed, the maps can be manipulated, expanded, printed, and downloaded. The original Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps collection on microfilm has long been one of the few comprehensive sets for the entire U.S., with some 660,000 maps.