The yard sale atlas changed how I read old maps

I always thought vintage maps were just decorative until I bought a 1923 atlas for 8 dollars at a yard sale in Columbus. Looking at the street names, I realized half of them don't match what's there now, and that got me digging into how place names shift over time. People keep treating old maps as if they're perfect records, but they're snapshots of a moment, errors and all. Has anyone else found a map that led them down a research rabbit hole about their own town?

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kimfisher10d ago

Figure out what's actually changed before you go all detective mode on it. I mean, street names get renamed all the time for dumb reasons, like honoring some mayor nobody remembers or fixing a duplicate that confused the mail carriers. Half the time it's just a good old typo that got copied forward for forty years. Idk, it's a fun little hobby to kill an afternoon with, but I wouldn't call it a rabbit hole unless you're finding actual court records or something.

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