Historical Topographic Maps of Fayetteville

Of all of the many types of maps that have been made for one purpose or another, I find one of the most enjoyable kind to look at are the old USGS topographic maps. These types have been made since 1879 (which also was the year that USGS was established) and thus, depict the human world that once was. This is particularly interesting since many localities have been mapped three or more times and we can see the evolution of human geography. For this reason and because I grew up within two miles of two towns that were abandoned during the 1960s as a dam was constructed and flooded the town sites, I'm easily fascinated by old maps that show towns and other old settlements and structures that have been abandoned.

Old topo maps from across the country can be viewed and downloaded for free (in JPEG, TIFF, or PDF formats) from the USGS (click here for more). Admittedly, this USGS site is a huge rabbit hole for me to fall into and I've downloaded several topo maps from it, including several of the Fayetteville, Arkansas area, such as this one:

1901 topo map of northwest Arkansas (1:125,000 scale)

In the above map, the Fayetteville area was obviously much different than today. Most of the city was bounded by what is now Maple St. (north), MLK Jr. Blvd. (south), Mission Blvd. (east), and Razorback Rd. (west). For reference, Baum Stadium is near the the 3-way railroad intersection (then called Fayette Junction, but not labelled here), Township St. runs along the township boundary between T.16N. and T.17N. (solid east-west line that passes between the 'S' and 'T' in St. Louis and San Francisco R.R.), and Northwest Arkansas Mall is just north of the 'And' in "Anderson Br." southeast of Johnson. Quite frankly, at the time that this map was made, a trip to Springdale was a day trip that you'd have to pack a bag for. Considerably different than today, and you can see that in these maps:

1979 topo map of northwest Arkansas (1:100,000 scale)

1995 topo map of Fayetteville (1:24,000 scale)


Historical growth of Fayetteville (from Fayetteville City Plan 2040 draft)

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