Design
A Historical Atlas of America, Built for the 21st Century
The country’s most formative stories are coming alive in a new digital “Panorama.”
When Charles Paullin’s Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States first appeared in 1932, it was hailed as a “monument to historical scholarship.” Its 700 maps traced nearly every dimension of American life across the country’s geographical bounds—its natural history, its settlement by Europeans, the spread of railroads, state boundaries, suffrage, and much else.
Paullin, a naval historian, hoped his meticulous research and beautiful renderings would inspire new research into history’s old narratives. They did. And yet for nearly a century, no other project really attempted to match its depth.