The exchange of gestural and sketch maps remains one of the mostcommon uses of cartographic representation, despite the fact thatprinted maps—and now, their digital and broadcast counterparts—areall around us. Common sense supports this assertion, but precious littlehistorical scholarship has addressed the history or nature of ephemeral,informal, or private cartography in modern print cultures. This paperexamines twentieth-century American road maps and mapping practicesthat lie on the cusp between the manuscript and the printed, thepublic and the private. These practices prompt a reconsideration of theusefulness of these distinctions in the history of cartography and of thetraditional emphasis on the end-products of the cartographic processover the use, both public and private, of maps.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.