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A treasure trove of historical Ohio maps that ������ digitized about five years ago has recently become part of the public domain, making them free for anyone to use.

It’s a case of the maps being the treasure, Michael Hawkins, Kent State’s data librarian and head of , told Kent State Today.

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. maps, dating from 1882, came into the collections of University Libraries in the early 1990s when the Library of Congress was looking for a home for thousands of pages of Sanborn maps.

“The Library of Congress had original duplicates of the maps and was looking for a place to house them,” Hawkins said. “We developed the largest complete collection of Ohio Sanborn maps in the state.” 

While the maps were produced into the early 1960s, Kent State’s collection goes up to 1938.

Sanborn created the maps for its expanding fire insurance business, then a staffer would painstakingly make a copy of each map. It was this collection of original duplicates that came into Kent State’s possession.

In 2019, Hawkins and Virginia “Ginnie” Dressler, digital projects librarian, received state grants to digitize the full collection, making them available online for anyone. The maps are of interest to students, researchers, architects, builders and historians.

Each year, a portion of the collection reaches the age where it is no longer subject to copyright protection, meaning the maps are free for anyone to use and reproduce without permission.

Library staff are anxious to spread the word about the public domain, for the freedom it will bring to researchers or anyone looking to reproduce a copy of one of the maps without having to get permission.

Of 1,840 digitized maps, 1,658 are now in the public domain, Dressler said.  

“You can put a Sanborn map on a birthday cake,” quipped Jennifer Mapes, Ph.D., associate professor of geography, noting how many cartoon characters or sports logos cannot be legally reproduced due to copyright infringement.

The collection is extensive.

“The digital collection of Sanborn maps includes 1,840 digital items,” Dressler said. “Each item represents a town and date of the maps, which could be a single page or up to 200. In total, there are 23,953 digitized individual maps represented.”

The Sanborn Fire Insurance Co. began offering fire insurance for large industrial areas in the 1860s and creating maps of the insured areas. Early maps show only insured buildings, but as the number of insured properties grew, the maps became more complex showing neighboring structures and whole blocks. Over time, the company moved from mostly insuring urban areas to rural structures.

“The fire insurance maps also do a great job of showing community development,” Hawkins said.

Dressler said that because the maps offer details about building materials, they are often sought by architects and others involved in historical renovations or those who want to learn more about the history of an area where they are working.

Kent State’s collection includes all the state’s large cities – Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo – and most smaller cities and towns.

“If you want to know ‘Where’s Waldo?’ we have the map,” said Dressler referring to the village in Marion County, Ohio.  

Mapes and her students have used the maps for many projects over the years, including research into the development of the city of Kent, and requests for help from other communities, including one from the Trumbull County Historical Society which had them pulling the map of Warren, Ohio, the county seat.

Dressler said historians can use the maps to locate and identify buildings and neighborhoods, urban historians can study the growth of towns and cities, and environmentalists often use them to research the impact of new developments.  

Hawkins said the Map Library often gets requests from area residents, genealogists or historical societies for help answering obscure questions.

“They will ask, ‘How many billiard halls were in downtown Ravenna, Ohio, in 1886?,’” Hawkins said, noting how the maps often contain the data. “Other times, it will be, ‘There was a church next to my grandma’s house. What was the name of it?.’”

Having the maps digitized online has made those tasks easier, and made the maps more accessible to the public. Having most of the maps in the public domain opens even more possibilities, Dressler said.  

Historical maps are fun to download, print and frame, particularly if they reflect a significant area for a community or person, such as the previously mentioned grandma’s house, Dressler noted.

“It’s such a rich resource,” Dressler said, “There are so many different ways to use it you can’t even articulate.”

Those who prefer to view the actual maps may visit the Map Library, room 410 McGilvrey Hall. View the to learn more about University Libraries’ cartographic and geospatial resources.