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TIL I was reading 18th century maps wrong for a decade
I collect old maps of New England and always wondered why towns like Dorchester looked shifted. Turns out I never noticed the compass rose pointed west in this 1785 atlas from Boston, so I had everything flipped. My buddy pointed it out during a trivia night of all places. Has anyone else had a map orientation trick them for years?
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wesley8017d ago
Learned the same lesson the hard way with a Vermont map from around 1800. The whole thing was drawn with south at the top, which was common back then for some surveyors, and I spent weeks confused about why the roads ran in directions that made no sense. What finally helped was picking one landmark I knew for sure, like a river bend or a church, and using that as my anchor before trusting anything else on the sheet. Now the first thing I do is check the rose and any notes in the corner before I even look at the towns. Glad your buddy caught it, those flipped views can really mess with your head.
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