Found a map from 1955 that called my town "Wretched Flats" instead of its real name

Got this old road map from a garage sale last weekend in Tulsa and when I flipped to my hometown it literally said "Wretched Flats" in big letters where the actual town name should be. Turns out the map maker just made up names for small towns they didn't bother to research. Has anyone else found a map that just straight up invented names for places?

2 comments

2 Comments

sagesingh28d ago

Those old highway maps are notorious for that, you gotta check the copyright date.

the_jennifer28d ago

Wait, is that really true about the copyright date? I mean, I get that old maps can be outdated, but I've seen some from the 90s that still show roads that don't exist anymore, so the copyright year might not always tell the whole story. Those cartographers sometimes reused old data for years, you know? Plus, if a map was printed in 1995 but the data came from a 1987 survey, the copyright could be misleading. I always look for the "last revised" or "edition" number instead of just relying on the year at the bottom.