Maphead_ Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks - Ken Jennings [123]
60 “cover for small detachments”: Mark Monmonier, How to Lie with Maps (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 127.
60 783 feet by 383 feet: James R. Akerman and Robert W. Karrow, Jr., eds., Maps: Finding Our Place in the World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 156. The only completely blank USGS map in the Great Salt Lake is, I believe, 41112C6, known as “Rozel Point SW,” but there are several others that show only a single train trestle or boundary line.
63 the ghosts of dead mapmakers: Ibid., p. 137.
64 the “pink bits”: This was the “British Empire Map of the World,” the brainchild of the Canadian schoolteacher George Parkin. Klinghoffer, The Power of Projections, p. 79.
64 localized versions: You can view a comparison at “Disputed Territory? Google Maps Localizes Borders Based on Local Laws,” Search Engine Roundtable, Dec. 1, 2009, www.seroundtable.com/archives/021249.html.
64 God would strike her down: Nadav Shragai et al., “Olmert Backs Tamir’s Proposal to Include Green Line in Textbook Maps,” Ha’aretz, June 12, 2006.
65 1,807 feet east: Elizabeth White, “Four Corners Marker Is Off Target,” Denver Post, Apr. 23, 2009.
65 Mike Parker has noted: In his very entertaining Map Addict (London: Collins, 2009), p. 131. Map Addict was released while I was writing Map-head and is a very British version of this book’s own map-nerd-memoir mission statement.
67 the Mount McKinley controversy: James W. Loewen, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong (New York: Touchstone, 2007), p. 39.
67 “Whorehouse Meadow”: Mark Monmonier, From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name, Claim, and Inflame (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), p. 64. Monmonier’s book is a particularly good exploration of politically incorrect toponyms and the issues they raise.
68 tantalizing place-names: Wilford, The Mapmakers, p. 165.
68 Ortelius’s 1596 note: James Romm, “A New Forerunner of Continental Drift,” Nature 367 (February 3, 1994), pp. 407–408.
69 the eccentric town toponyms: I took most of these examples from David Jouris’s clever All over the Map: An Extraordinary Atlas of the United States (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1994). If you’re looking for U.S. maps depicting 75 Christmas-themed town names or 250 towns with the same names as famous writers, this is the book for you.
69 an enterprising local tailor: Meic Stephens, The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 354.
69 back to being Halfway, Oregon: William Drenttel, “What Ever Happened to Half.com, Oregon?,” Design Observer, Aug. 29, 2006, www.designobserver.com/observatory/entry.html?entry=4707.
70 Sharer, Kentucky, turned down: “Gambling Site Offers to Buy Town’s Name,” Associated Press, Sept. 26, 2005.
70 Butt Hole Road: “Residents of ‘Butt Hole Road’ Club Together to Change Street’s Unfortunate Name,” Daily Mail, May 26, 2009.
70 “I feel sure”: David Usborne, “The Town That Refuses to Be Ashamed of Its Name,” The Independent, Mar. 22, 1995.
71 every place got a cozy: Harwood, To the Ends of the Earth, p. 80.
71 suspiciously un-Japanese names: Vincent Virga, Cartographia: Mapping Civilizations (New York: Little, Brown, 2007), p. 76.
72 “Under the influence”: Michael Theodoulou, “Ideological Gulf Enflames Iran,” The Times, Dec. 3, 2004.
73 tensions in the Gulf are still running high: Tom Hundley, “A Gulf by Any Other Name,” GlobalPost, Mar. 15, 2010, www.globalpost.com/dispatch/middle-east/100312/persian-gulf-arabian.
73 “Even on a stormy day”: Marcel Proust, Swann’s Way (New York: Modern Library, 1913/2003), pp. 550–551.
75 “No lost maps”: This quote, and other historical details about the map’s creation and discovery, were drawn from Toby Lester, The Fourth Part of the World: The Race to the Ends of the Earth, and the Epic Story of the Map That Gave America Its Name (New York: Free Press, 2009).
77 “They . . . are excessively”: Jack Hitt, “Original Spin: