MAPS TO Amuse

As early as the sixteenth century, cartographers designed maps that used humor to make satirical or sly political commentary. These maps commonly depicted countries as anthropomorphic or zoomorphic shapes, which served as metaphors of political power. Monarchs and prime ministers were drawn in the shape of their particular countries. In the late eighteenth century, English cartoonist James Gillray produced several satirical cartoon maps, most famously A New Map of England & France, showing “The French Invasion; or John Bull, bombarding the Bum-Boats.” In the late nineteenth century, English pantomime artist Lilian Lancaster drew anthropomorphic maps for William Harvey’s Geographical Fun: Being Humorous Outlines of Various Countries, and Fred Rose created several Serio-Comic War maps showing European states personified by monarchs or beasts, most notably Russia, represented as an octopus, wrapping its arms around the countries of central and southern Europe. Cartoonists in the United States created similar maps, notably Scott’s Great Snake, which showed Union forces encircling the Confederate states during the Civil War. MacDonald Gill gave the humorous map further impetus with the publication of his Wonderground Map in 1914.

Many American pictorial maps published between the 1920s and 1960s contained humor. Jo Mora’s maps were a prime example, though maps such as his typically used humor to make other content more interesting. A handful of maps, however, were simply designed to entertain. In an age when Walt Disney perfected the animated film and cartoons and comic strips were important newspaper features, humorous maps were a natural outgrowth of American popular culture. Indeed, Disney created at least three comic maps in the 1930s, showing Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy gamboling across the United States and around the world (plates 1 and 2). The popular stories about a giant lumberjack and Babe, his blue ox, inspired Ray Handy of Duluth, Minnesota, to create Paul Bunyan’s Pictorial Map of the United States Depicting Some of His Deeds and Exploits (1935) (plate 3).

Another humorous strain emphasized cartoon-like places. Ruth Taylor White was best known for Our USA: A Gay Geography (1935), a book of state maps done in a cartoon pictorial style, but she also created a series of cartoon “cartographs” of the Hawaiian Islands for the Hawaii Tourist Board in the 1930s (plate 5). Unlike Disney’s maps, White’s cartographs displayed no popular cartoon characters. Instead, she highlighted the extraordinary natural scenery of the islands and populated them with tiny tourist figures. Other graphic artists adopted a similar style. The Lindgren brothers of Spokane, Washington, began as printers and sign makers in the prosperous 1920s.185 As the Depression took hold, they added humorous maps of the Pacific Northwest to their product line. Designed by Jolly Lindgren and produced using silk-screen stencils, the maps were tagged “hysterical maps.” Jolly declared at the time: “What this country needs now is something to put a smile on people’s faces.”186 After experimenting with different colors of paper and varieties of printed colors, the Lindgrens settled on a standard design using white paper with a light blue border, light yellow ground, dark blue for titles, black for minor text, and red for roads. The Lindgrens created a recognizable brand, one of the most distinctive in the pictorial map genre. In contrast to the many historical-themed maps that were appearing across the country, the Lindgrens focused on producing comic maps of popular tourist destinations, and the great national parks of the Western states were an obvious subject. The Lindgrens produced hysterical maps of Yellowstone (plate 6), the Grand Canyon, Glacier, Zion, Bryce Canyon, and other parks during the 1930s and early 1940s. With automobile tourism increasing rapidly, the product line did extremely well. After a hiatus during World War II, the company supplemented hysterical maps with a popular line of pictorial transfer decals. Easily affixed to glass, such as a car window, the decals depicted an extensive range of subjects, including simplified versions of hysterical maps (plate 7). In a good year, the company sold more than ten million decals and dominated the American decal market.187 In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Lindgrens produced King Size Mapcards, which depicted further versions of their hysterical maps (plate 8). Whether as paper map, transfer decal, or large postcard, the Lindgren brothers created one of the most recognizable pictorial map brands in the country.

Brag maps were another fun way of drawing attention to a city or state. Daniel K. Wallingford created two maps, A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America (1935) (plate 9) and A Bostonian’s Idea of the United States of America (1937). Both maps distorted the geography of the country: areas closest to Boston and New York were exaggerated at the expense of other parts of the country. On the New York map, Brooklyn was shown larger than Texas, while the Great Lakes were depicted as not much larger than New York Harbor. Such notions of East Coast superiority were not tolerated for long. California illustrator and cartographer E. S. Hammack drew “Greater!” Los Angeles—And the Rest of the United States as Seen thru the Sun Kissed Glasses of a Los Angeleno in 1939 (plate 11), which was soon followed by other California views of the country (plate 12). Texas was not far behind. Western graphic artist Mark Storm produced Official Texas Brags Map of North America (1948) (plate 10), which depicted the Lone Star State occupying much of the country with the panhandle reaching into Canada.

Pictorial maps displaying gentle satire were also popular. In 1926, Edward McCandlish designed the Bootlegger’s Map of the United States (plate 13) in response to Prohibition. With its “Scale of Pints” and “Pints of the Compass,” the map played on well-known place names, such as “Bar Harbor,” “Brandy-Wine,” “Boozé” (Boise), and “Chi-keg-o.” Hagstrom published a revised version, Bill Whiffletree’s Bootlegger’s Map of the United States, as a full-color, linen-backed wall map, suitable for “game rooms, fraternity houses, dormitory rooms, or private bars.”188 The dangers of too much alcohol were displayed in H. J. Lawrence’s anthropomorphic Map Showing the Isle of Pleasure (1931) (plate 14), which imagined such locations as “Whiskey Strait,” “Gulp Stream,” and “Hang Over Hollow” in the skull-shaped “State of Inebriation.” In contrast to the perils of addiction, Ernest Dudley Chase created A Pictorial Map of Loveland (1943) (plate 15), which included “Oceans of Joy” and “Bay of Bliss,” a testament to the card maker’s sentimental streak. His Mercator Map of the World (plate 16) also showed his playful side, a map perfect for a child’s bedroom. Whatever the subject, humor was often a central part of American pictorial maps.

PLATE 1. Walt Disney, Dixon’s Mickey Mouse Map of the United States, circa 1930s, 23.4 × 34.9 cm. Disney’s comedy trio of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy explore each of the forty-eight states in this cartoon pictorial map designed for children.

Disney characters © Disney. Private collection

PLATE 2. Walt Disney, Standard Oil Company of California Presents Mickey’s and Donald’s Race to Treasure Island, Golden Gate International Exposition on San Francisco Bay, 1939, 50 × 68 cm. This Disney pictorial map encouraged children to learn the names of American states and Canadian provinces by collecting information cards to stick on the map’s borders.

Disney characters © Disney. Ethel M. Fair Collection (392), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 3. Ray D. Handy, Paul Bunyan’s Pictorial Map of the United States Depicting Some of His Deeds and Exploits, 1935, 47.6 × 72.8 cm. Handy, a Minnesotan, designed this pictorial map of legendary hero Paul Bunyan for decorating classrooms and children’s bedrooms. Paul’s blue ox serves as the center of the compass rose.

Ethel M. Fair Collection (468), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 4. Frank Dier, A Cow Poke’s Map of the Black Hills and His Round-Up, 1937, 92.4 × 45.6 cm. Bordered by cattle brands, Dier’s large cartoon map includes a pirouetting cowboy for the compass points, a bucking bronco for the scale, and the slogan “Every state in union represented and all foreign countries including Maine and Vermont.”

Ethel M. Fair Collection (473), Geography and Map Divi-sion, Library of Congress

PLATE 5. Ruth Taylor White, Island of Hawaii, 1941, 26.5 × 20.3 cm. Issued by the Hawaii Tourist Bureau, White’s “cartograph,” as she called it, employs a light-hearted graphic style to depict the natural wonders of the islands and the many visiting tourists, as well as Native Hawaiians and Japanese immigrants.

Ethel M. Fair Collection (246), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 6. Jolly Lindgren, A Hysterical Map of the Yellowstone Park, 1936, 40 × 40 cm. With “smileage guaranteed,” Lindgren’s “hysterical map” contains numerous jokes and contemporary references, including a bird exclaiming, “Looks like a new deal for the park.” Musical notes form the scale.

Private collection

PLATE 7. Jolly Lindgren, Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, circa 1950s, 10 × 6.5 cm. This work is a simplified version of the original Hysterical Map of the Yellowstone Park, produced in DayGlo colors for the popular decal market.

Private collection

PLATE 8. Jolly Lindgren, A Hysterical Map of Yellowstone Park and the Jackson Hole Country Slightly Cockeyed, circa 1950s, 22 × 13.7 cm. Lindgren-Turner Company’s King Size Mapcard, the final version of the 1936 Hysterical Map of the Yellowstone Park, includes the Jackson Hole Country and several new jokes. A bird flying over Jackson declares, “It’s the tallest hole I’ve ever seen.”

Private collection

PLATE 9. Daniel K. Wallingford, A New Yorker’s Idea of the United States of America, 1936, 16.8 × 23.3 cm. Wallingford’s distorted map captures the self-centered world of New Yorkers. The familiar area of New York City and Brooklyn is expanded at the expense of the rest of the country, while New Yorkers’ geographical ignorance is shown by such absurdities as Oregon lying to the north of Washington State.

Muriel H. Parry Collection (74), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 10. Mark Storm, Official Texas Brags Map of North America, 1948, 42.6 × 55.9 cm. Drawing inspiration from Wallingford’s map (plate 9) and the corny jokes of Jolly Lindgren (plate 6), Storm’s pictorial map captures the braggadocio characteristic of the Lone Star State.

Muriel H. Parry Collection (77), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 11. E. S. Hammack, “Greater!” Los Angeles and the Rest of the United States as Seen thru the Sun-Kissed Glasses of a Los Angeleno, 1939, 24.6 × 46.8 cm. Hammack’s response to Wallingford’s New Yorker’s map (plate 9) shows the sun, personified as an orange, shining down on Los Angeles, which encompasses much of California and the Hawaiian islands. Angelic zephyrs blow in from the Pacific while angry hurricanes hit Florida. Canada is shown as a land of ice and snow.

Private collection

PLATE 12. Oren Arnold, Map of the United States as Californians See It, 1947, 40.5 × 50.8 cm. A “kissin sun” shines on the Golden State, which now includes the entire West Coast, while Los Angeles’s city limits reach across the continent. Florida, California’s winter rival for tourist dollars, is shown as a land of swamps and hurricanes.

Ethel M. Fair Collection (275), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 13. Edward Gerstell McCandlish, Bootlegger’s Map of the United States, 1926, 54.1 × 86.5 cm. A satirical response to Prohibition, McCandlish covers his pictorial map with cartoon figures and alcoholic place-names, including Lake Champagne and Bar Harbor.

Ethel M. Fair Collection (504), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 14. H. J. (Heinie) Lawrence, Map Showing Isle of Pleasure, 1931, 50.5 × 43.3 cm. With a skull representing the “Isle of Pleasure,” this striking Prohibition-era pictorial map shows the joys and evils of consuming alcohol. Drink names mark the map border.

Muriel H. Parry Collection (65), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress

PLATE 15. Ernest Dudley Chase collaborating with Stephen York, A Pictorial Map of Loveland, 1943, 40 × 58 cm. Chase combined greeting card sentiment and cartography in this memorable pictorial map of “Loveland.” Hearts and Cupid’s arrows form the map border.

American Geographical Society Library, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Libraries.

PLATE 16. Ernest Dudley Chase, Mercator Map of the World, 1931, 77 × 107 cm. Published by Houghton Mifflin in its pictorial map series, the Mercator Map of the World shows Chase at his best. Designed for the walls of children’s bedrooms, the map is packed with informative pictures, including Napoleon sulking on St. Helena in the south Atlantic and a large green dragon astride China.

Ethel M. Fair Collection (712), Geography and Map Division, Library of Congress