Roads, Mail and Highways: The County Drawn for Travelers, in Two Classes

The postal-route map class and the official state highway-map run, at catalogue and record strength

The mail class has a birthday: The National Archives' history of the Post Office Department's site-location records states the class's founding facts whole. Before 1837 the Post Office Department had no official mapmaker and purchased its maps from commercial firms or private individuals. On March 13, 1837, Henry A. Burr was appointed the first Topographer of the Post Office, and he began preparing maps for postal officials' use, fed by reports in which postmasters furnished the data the Topographer needed to place post offices in relation to nearby offices and transportation routes. In 1862 Postmaster General Montgomery Blair directed the Topographer to prepare a comprehensive set of postal maps for sale to the public, state by state, continually updated. On January 3, 1955, the Postmaster General ordered the end of sales of postal route maps and ended the site-report system that fed them. The underlying Indiana evidence survives as National Archives Microfilm M1126, Post Office Department Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950 — 683 rolls, arranged by state, county and post office, with St. Joseph County falling on Roll 168, Indiana, Pulaski–St. Joseph counties.

The mail class on this county's own shelf: The Indiana State Library's St. Joseph County list gives the class two dated local artifacts. The first is the Map of St. Joseph County Showing Rural Delivery Service, by the United States Post Office Department, Washington, 1910 — the county drawn entirely as a mail-delivery system, every rural route a line on the map. The second is its undated successor of the 1940s, catalogued as “[Map of] St. Joseph County, Indiana, showing rural delivery service,” United States Post Office Department, Washington, in the 1940s. Between those two sheets, and the commercial traveler's map banked earlier in this history — Rand McNally's 1880 Indexed Map of Indiana, indexing every post office, railroad station and town in the state — the mail class for this county stands at catalogue strength: a federal mapmaker from 1837, a public sale series from 1862, a county rural-delivery map in 1910 and again in the 1940s, and the archive rolls that fed them all.

The highway-map class, and its run: The official state highway map is the mail map's twentieth-century heir — the state drawing itself for the traveler, on a cycle. The Indiana Department of Transportation dates its own centennial to July 1919, “the awarding of the first state highway contracts by the Indiana State Highway Commission,” its predecessor; the commission itself had been created by the legislature of 1917, in the account the 1917 Bowen's Indiana State Atlas prints, so the state could take part in the federal aid appropriated by Congress in 1916 — 75 million dollars over five years, no state entitled to receive aid until it had a state highway department the federal bureau approved. The department and the Indiana State Library have since digitized the state's official highway-map catalogue between them — the department holding most years, the library supplying the maps the department was missing and receiving scans of the years it lacked — with the department's own caution that not every year is represented, maps having sometimes been printed every two years, especially in the 1990s and 2000s.

The highway class on this county's shelf: The State Library's county list carries the state-drawn county sheets that the highway system produced for this ground: the Indiana Highway Survey Commission's Map of St. Joseph County in two versions of about 1936, one labelled Road and one Cultural; and the General Highway and Transportation Map, St. Joseph County, Indiana, by the State Highway Commission in 1949 and in its Division of Planning editions of 1961, 1976 and 1980. Around them the list holds the class's local fellows — a Road Map of St. Joseph County dated about 1928, Earl R. Feldman's Road Map, St. Joseph County of 1933, and the St. Joseph County Plan Commission's Road Map of 1955 — the county drawn for travelers, by state and county hands, across the whole motor age.

Sources:

1. National Archives, “Post Office Reports of Site Locations, 1837–1950” and Microfilm Publication M1126 descriptive pamphlet (archives.gov): no official Post Office mapmaker before 1837 and maps purchased commercially; Henry A. Burr appointed first Topographer March 13, 1837; site-location reports as the Topographer's data; Postmaster General Montgomery Blair's 1862 direction to prepare postal maps for public sale; the January 3, 1955 order ending postal route map sales; 683 rolls arranged by state and county, with Roll 168 covering Indiana, Pulaski–St. Joseph counties.
2. Indiana State Library, “St. Joseph County Maps” list: United States Post Office Department, Map of St. Joseph county showing rural delivery service, Washington, 1910; the 1940s Post Office Department rural-delivery map of the county; Indiana Highway Survey Commission county maps, Road and Cultural, about 1936; State Highway Commission, General highway and transportation map, St. Joseph County, 1949, and Division of Planning editions of 1961, 1976 and 1980; Road map of St. Joseph county, about 1928; Earl R. Feldman, Road map, St. Joseph County, 1933; St. Joseph County Plan Commission, Road map, St. Joseph County, 1955.
3. Indiana Department of Transportation, “Historic Maps” page and “Historic State Highway Maps Now Easily Available” (in.gov/indot): the July 1919 centennial of the first state highway contracts under the Indiana State Highway Commission; the joint INDOT–Indiana State Library digitization of the official highway-map catalogue, each supplying the other's missing years; and the caution that maps were sometimes printed every two years, especially in the 1990s and 2000s.
4. Bowen's Indiana State Atlas (B. F. Bowen & Co., Indianapolis, 1917), foreword and state history, via Archive.org full text: the federal act of 1916 appropriating 75 million dollars for rural post roads and requiring an approved state highway department, and the Indiana legislature of 1917 creating the state highway commission to take part.
5. Banked record for this history, as supplied in this section's register: the highways class already banked, including Rand McNally's 1880 Indexed Map of Indiana and the Lincoln Highway Association guide.