Special Collections Division the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries Vol. XIV * No. 2 * Fall 2000

MAPSCO Donates Archives to UTA
By Katherine R. Goodwin and Kevin Harper

MAPSCO, Inc., a Dallas-based company specializing in the creation and publishing of city maps for the past fifty years, has designated the Virginia Garrett Cartographic History Library at The University of Texas at Arlington as the company’s archives. MAPSCO has begun transferring its maps and other products to UTA so that the University can preserve, catalog and provide public access to them. The MAPSCO Archives will enhance the University’s collection of 20^th century maps in particular and recognize MAPSCO as an innovator of cartographic products during the past half-century.

The company began in 1948 as an effort by Milton Boyd Keith to simplify deliveries from his two Dallas flower shops. Maps of Dallas at that time, even those provided by city agencies, were out of date, inaccurate, and difficult for drivers to use. Flower shop drivers constantly got lost and orders were delayed or cancelled.

In his search to locate city of Dallas maps, Keith finally approached the Building Inspection Division of the city, which boasted the most correct, up-to-date maps, and arranged to obtain copies. However, the maps did not have an index because inspection personnel were so familiar with them that they worked from memory. To solve this problem, Keith and Lily Kendrick, manager of one of the flower shops, laboriously created hand-drawn, indexed maps that could be used by the drivers. Another problem was the duplication of street names. During the early 1950s, the city began eliminating the worst of the duplications, but not all the problems were corrected.

Keith realized that keeping current mapping of a growing Dallas would be an on-going effort. However, he and Lily Kendrick continued to work on the project and, in 1952, the first commercial edition of MAPSCO Dallas was published out of the back room of the Oak Lawn flower shop. The booklet was 5" x 8 ½" and opened on the right side like a book, which you then turned 45 degrees clockwise to get the proper orientation. The pages at that point flipped up like a small flip chart. The booklet covered the areas of Dallas, Highland Park, University Park, Cockrell Hill, Carrollton, and Garland. The last two communities each had one page dedicated to their area. The booklet used a scale of three inches to a mile, and the streets were individually numbered to provide a point of reference for an index. The street index told users what page the street number was on. One company employee later related, "Finding your street was a little tricky but not impossible."

Other delivery services in town quickly saw the value in Keith’s creation, and the first few editions were created for and primarily used by delivery and service people. Sales were slow until the City of Dallas purchased 300 of the street guides for their fire and ambulance services. Sales were easier after that, and in a short time, Dallas post offices, real estate salesmen, and others accepted the street guides as part of the Dallas business landscape.

In 1955 the company moved from the street numbering system to a Roman military style grid-numbering system. The same grid system is in effect today. If your street was located in grid 53P in 1955, it is still shown on grid 53P today. About 1956 MAPSCO began selling the handy guides to individuals.

The Flower Mart in Dallas was one of Milton Keith's flower shops

By 1959 the company began to expand and made its first acquisition, JIFFYMAP, a company specializing in fold maps. This allowed MAPSCO, which had previously provided printing and distribution services for the company, to move aggressively into the fold map market. In 1961, the company increased inventory to include Rand McNally maps and products, and the company was investigating producing a street guide for neighboring Fort Worth. The1960s saw the company increase its market share with custom mapping, large wall maps that were laminated, and the opening of retail outlets. In 1965 Burton’s Orchids and Flowers, one of the original flower shops, was liquidated and the assets diverted to the mapping business.

The 1970s and 1980s saw continued expansion and success for the Dallas operation. The company moved into new quarters and more retail stores opened. The company expanded into other markets besides Fort Worth, including Louisville, Kentucky. The1990s brought Austin, El Paso, the mid-cities, San Antonio, Ellis and Johnson counties, Denton and Cooke counties, Collin and Grayson counties as well as Denver, Colorado; Las Cruces, New Mexico, as well as the rights to Juarez, Mexico. This year the company published guides to Hays, Caldwell, Blanco and Bastrop counties.

Along the way, the company found it expedient to upgrade its technology to accommodate the growing market and the economics of publishing. The hand-drawn maps of Lily Kendrick who used pen and ink and Leroy lettering guides gave way to a small cadre of cartographers using "scribe and scribecote" hand methods. Dallas street guides were updated annually with about 700 to 800 changes using this manual system. In 1980 the company switched to a state-of-the-art Graphic Arts Camera. Renovation to the drafting facilities and the construction of an elaborate dark room enabled MAPSCO to create negatives for maps with the most modern equipment of the time. The most recent innovation is the advent of digital images. The Digital Pilot Project was completed in 1996, and 25 of 201 pages from the Dallas street guide were converted at that time. The company published the first all digital Dallas street guide in 1997.

The current inventory of MAPSCO includes not only the traditional street guides for various cities and counties, but also fold maps; customized maps for school districts, real estate firms, churches, entertainment districts, and other special categories; along with wall maps, and maps on CD. The company also has eight successful retail stores and one on-line store at http://www.mapsco.com in operation. In addition, they have recently signed a lease for a ninth retail outlet to open by the end of the year in Frisco, Texas.

The flower shops have long since given way to the mapping business. Boyd Keith’s desire to find a way to deliver flowers in a timely manner to his customers resulted in a new genre of maps and mapping for cities and counties. In the process, MAPSCO has become the standard by which others are judged. Ask anyone in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex if they have a MAPSCO and chances are they will have one in their car. But in any case, they will know immediately what a MAPSCO is and how it is used!

MAPSCO, Inc. represents contemporary maps and mapping. However, the company is providing its maps and cartographic products for current and future use. The maps of the past fifty years and those that follow will provide students and other researchers the primary source materials to examine urban development and spatial growth, as well as cultural, economic, and political change in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. It is gifts like this that will help UTA continue to build on its role as a leader in amassing and interpreting cartographic materials of major importance, and in training students and others in their use.

For more information about the MAPSCO donation, please contact Katherine Goodwin at 817-272-5329 (voice), 817-272-3360 (fax), or goodwin@uta.edu (e-mail).

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