Home Front maps - WW2

[prestoncohunter]

Found these at my FILs the other day. Sadly the one had been heavily taped at the seams. The Erie Railroad on is in very good shape however, no copyright date that I can fine. The "Special Edition" map has a copyright of 1943.

 

[prestoncohunter]

Erie map

[prestoncohunter]

I'm sure these items are common but common or not I get a kick out of them.

[speeder3]

Those are very nice examples! I especially like the Erie Railroad issued map as I have not seen any from the U.S. railroads for this time period. As a railroader, I'll need to seek one out for my own collection.

 

I have a couple examples of my own. I hope you don't mind if I post some photos of them on your thread.

 

I collect Union Oil Co. (Union 76) stuff and acquired a war map many years ago. It's in pretty rough shape with most of the folds breaking loose.

 

The other map is a Sears Roebuck & Co. map that was given out to purchasers of their Silvertone radios. My son collects and restores vacuum tube radios and picked up this map some time ago.

 

Best,

 

Brian

 

 

[Mr.Jerry]

I know these seem a bit archaic today in our world of cell phones and google earth and 24 hrs news channels

but for the families back then that got the war reports through Newsreels played before movies or via the radio these maps were valued information to help keep track of loved ones.

 

When the war broke out, even the US Navy didn't have maps of all of the little Pacific islands and had to hit up the National Geographic service to get some.

[prestoncohunter]

Very cool speeder3

[speeder3]

For what it's worth, one of the web sites that I like to browse for militaria is Etsy. There's actually quite a lot of interesting items on there, some priced on another planet and some pretty reasonable. I did a search for "war maps" and have found several nice examples, including a 1914 dated map from the Traveler's Insurance Company (pretty pricey at $175). There's a couple Esso war maps with nice cover graphics of B-24's, too. A Vietnam conflict map from KNX/CBS Radio is another nice find.

 

Brian

[siege1863]

When I used to collect WWII letters, I often read the men describing their travels across the US from their hometowns, to training camps, and ports of embarkation. In almost every instance, they took trains. Wanting to better follow their routes, I was able to find a very detailed war-time map of all the major rail lines across the country. Shows the names of the railroads and distances between the larger cities.