Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970: Browse Maps

With Digital Sanborn Maps, you can:

• Browse ~660,000 maps of 12,000 American cities and towns.
• Navigate the collection using an intuitive interface featuring handy drop-down menus.
• Easily examine multiple maps for towns and cities through numbered thumbnail views.
• Review key and index maps to find specific streets and buildings.
• Pan over the map sheet using your mouse.
• Magnify maps for greater detail with mouse wheel or zoom in / out.
• Download and print maps (in whole or part).

Sanborn Maps were originally published in color, yet the digital maps are displayed in black and white because the digital maps were created by scanning microfilm. Because the original maps were filmed in black and white, the digital images are also in black and white. Due to this source, color images cannot be made available and a maps legend has been specifically created for the black and white images.

While the addresses in the Digital Sanborn Maps, 1857-1970 database are not searchable, you can browse the maps by selecting the state, city, and date.  See the screenshot in the "Browsing" window on the left side of this page.

Once you have selected the desired state, city, and date, you may access thumbnails of all of the sheets available from the upper right menu.

1. Click a thumbnail to refresh the page and view the map in the Map Viewer.

2. Navigate back to the top of the page to select a different state, city and/or date.