I was digging through some old boxes my dad left me and found this county planning map from 1987. It shows this big 4-lane highway cutting right through the middle of our neighborhood, connecting two towns that are 5 miles apart. Problem is, the highway was never built, and the map labels it as 'existing' road with a solid line and everything. It's like someone just drew a fake road on a real map and called it a day. Has anyone else found a historical map that's just completely wrong about something major?
I bought a cheap foldout map from a dollar store in Phoenix for $2 just to hang on my wall. The whole thing was stretched wrong, Texas was tiny and Alaska looked like it was floating near Hawaii. Threw it in the trash after I tried to plan a road trip and everything was off by hundreds of miles. Has anyone else grabbed a map that looked like it was drawn by a kid?
Needed a quick map to find my way around Pilsen last week so I grabbed one from a BP on Western Ave. The thing had the Kennedy Expressway ending at the Chicago River with no connection to the Dan Ryan. Ended up driving in circles for 20 minutes before I just used my phone. Anyone else get burned by a poorly made city map?
I was cleaning out my dad's old atlas and there's this fold-out map where the cartographer clearly gave up on drawing the Bering Strait. It's just a solid chunk of land connecting Russia to Nome like someone spilled gravy on the page and called it a day. Has anyone else found maps that look like the person making them was guessing the geography from memory?
I was scrolling through some random geography forum last week and saw this map someone posted that showed Alaska as this tiny little thing next to a giant Texas. I laughed at first because everyone knows Alaska is huge. But then I actually pulled up the real numbers because the map looked so official with all these fancy colors and data points. Turns out the guy had used a projection that completely distorted the size difference. Alaska is literally more than twice the size of Texas but his map made it look like a third of it. I sent it to my buddy who teaches middle school geography and he said he sees this kind of thing all the time in student projects. Made me realize I should never trust a map at first glance no matter how clean it looks. Has anyone else caught a map that got basic facts embarrassingly wrong?
My buddy Mark sent me a map last week from some clickbait site that showed Italy floating near Albania. He swore it was some ancient Roman territory dispute map. I told him he was an idiot and it was just a bad cut and paste job. Turns out he was right about it being from a history blog, but the map still had Rome sitting in the middle of the Adriatic. Has anyone else seen those garbage maps that just move whole countries around for no reason?
Found this old map someone posted where Africa is drawn like a crooked potato and Scandinavia is just floating off by itself. The scale is so off that Norway looks bigger than the whole Mediterranean Sea. I sat there for 20 minutes trying to figure out where they even got the reference for this thing. Has anyone else found a map so bad it made you question how people navigated back then?
I was staying at the Palmer House last weekend and they had this big map of the train lines... north was pointing to the bottom right corner. Tried to get to Wrigley Field and ended up two miles in the wrong direction before I realized. Has anyone else seen hotel maps that seem intentionally confusing?
I was staying at a Marriott near O'Hare and someone actually hung a map where Lake Michigan was west of the city, which is just baffling, has anyone else seen a map so wrong it made you question reality?
I was looking up train routes and stumbled on this old map from some travel blog. They literally crammed all of Scotland under England like a footnote. Glasgow got stuck somewhere near Brighton. I had to check if it was a joke or just pure laziness. Has anyone else seen a map that treated an entire country like an afterthought?
Last weekend my buddy handed me a tourist map he grabbed from a gas station near Lake Tahoe. The map had a giant blue blob labeled "Truckee City Park" which is actually Donner Lake. I pointed it out and he shrugged saying the map was free so who cares. Has anyone else found a map where someone just made up names for landmarks?
Last Saturday I asked my neighbor for directions to the new loop trail behind Pine Ridge. He sketched this map on a napkin with a green pen and said the creek crossing was 'after the big oak.' We walked for an hour and ended up at someone's backyard shed with a barking dog. The creek was actually a dry gully and the big oak turned out to be a water tower. Has anyone else gotten lost from a map drawn by someone who 'knows the area'?
I came across this map on some clickbait site last week and I swear it looked like someone just copy-pasted Alaska on top of Texas without even trying to line it up right. The scale was all off too, Alaska looked like it was the size of two Texases when it's really not that big in reality. I mean, who made this thing, a third grader with a mouse? The worst part was the map claimed to show 'population density' but had a giant blob of Alaska right over Dallas. I laughed for a solid five minutes then sent it to three friends who all replied 'what am I looking at'. Has anyone else seen this specific atrocity floating around?
Was organizing my glovebox yesterday and pulled out a New York State road map from 1997. The fold lines were so worn that the highways split apart into three different sections, made planning a route impossible. Has anyone else found an old map that was just completely useless by today's standards?
My dad had this old gas station map from 1965 that showed a whole town in Kansas shifted about 20 miles west of where it actually sits. I drove out there last summer and found nothing but a wheat field where the map said the town center should be. How do mistakes that obvious even make it onto a printed map that people actually relied on?
Back in college I had this world map on my wall that made Greenland look almost as big as South America. I never questioned it. Last year I saw a comparison that puts Greenland over Africa and it's like a postage stamp. How did I go 10 years without realizing that thing was so warped? Anyone else have that moment where a bad map just clicks in your head?
Last weekend I printed out the official trail map from the Hocking Hills website and it showed a direct loop that just didn't exist on the ground. I ended up bushwhacking through poison ivy because the map had trails crossing in places where there was nothing but creek beds. How do these parks get away with putting out maps that look like a kid drew them in MS Paint?
I was trying to find a cut-through in rural Ohio and Google Maps told me to turn onto a gravel strip that ended at a guy's barn with chickens everywhere. Has anyone else had a map insist a farm lane is a public road?
I was clearing out my dad's old stuff and came across a folded up map of our city from 1985. On a whim I took it on a drive to find a restaurant on the other side of town. Three streets I tried to turn down just ended in cul-de-sacs that were through streets back then. One road on the map doesn't even exist anymore - it got turned into a bike path. Made it to the restaurant 40 minutes late and my wife was not happy. Has anyone else tried using an old map for fun and had it totally backfire?
I was looking up a new shopping center near me and this map showed the parking spaces running diagonal in a lot that I know is straight. Counted 47 lines that pointed the wrong way before I gave up on the whole thing. Does anyone else notice tiny map details that make the whole thing useless?
I was looking up directions to a buddy's place in the suburbs last night and stumbled onto this absolute gem. Somebody uploaded a hand drawn map from like 2010 that showed Lake Michigan as 'Big Water' and the expressway was just a squiggly line labeled 'the fast road'. The scale was completely off too, like they measured it by how long it took to walk between stops. It had all these random buildings marked like 'Burger King where Jim got sick' and 'tree with the funny branch'. I spent 20 minutes zooming in and laughing, but honestly I couldn't even use it to get where I was going. Has anyone else found a map that looked like a 5th grader drew it on a napkin?
I keep seeing people argue about which map projection is the most misleading and it always turns into this same debate. One side says Mercator is garbage because it makes Greenland look bigger than Africa when Africa is actually 14 times larger. The other side says Gall-Peters is just as bad because it stretches countries near the equator into weird skinny shapes that don't match reality at all. I noticed this at a local library last week where they had a Gall-Peters map on the wall and someone actually complained it looked like South America got flattened by a steamroller. My buddy who drives trucks says he uses Mercator for road trip planning because it keeps compass bearings straight which is fine for short trips but terrible for global perspective. I personally think both projections have their place but the internet fights make them out to be either completely evil or totally useless. Why does it have to be one or the other when you could just use an interactive globe app instead? Anybody else get tired of seeing these same two projections blamed for everything wrong with geography?
The gas station one showed a highway that was clearly a gravel logging road when I got there (it ended at a creek with no bridge), has anyone else had a paper map literally lie about terrain like that?
I was driving a load of furniture through rural Kansas last month and my GPS showed a road that didn't exist. Ended up down a dirt track with no way to turn around. Has anyone else had a map fail that actually cost them time or money?
I was showing a friend where I grew up near Marquette and pulled up a random map online. It had the whole UP colored in as part of Wisconsin and I stared at it for a solid minute before realizing yes, this is a real map someone made. Has anyone else seen a state border get redrawn like this in a random map?