A Stranger Quest: David Rumsey’s Marvelous Map Collection

The David Rumsey Map Collection is one of the true gems of the web: a massive trove of maps & related images from over 40 years of collecting.

Rumsey began building a collection of North and South American historical maps and related cartographic materials in 1980. Eventually the collection expanded to include historical maps of the entire world, from the 16th to the 21st centuries. His collection, with more than 200,000 maps, is one of the largest private map collections in the United States.

Italian filmmaker Andrea Gatopoulos has made a documentary film called A Stranger Quest about Rumsey’s passion for maps. Here’s the trailer:

And because I can’t resist, a few maps from the collection:

That last one is a screenshot of the results for “lighthouse” from their new Text-On-Maps search capability.

• Andrea Gatopoulos
• A Stranger Quest
• David Rumsey
• maps
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