Maps are particularly useful in helping tell the stories of discovery, exploration, territorial expansion, settlement, and town planning. It is typical for general history textbooks to use maps in this way as part of an introduction to a region’s history. This type of illustrative map display tends not to be very sophisticated or challenging; in general histories, maps are seldom used for exploring issues of cultural history or social values. Still, historical stories are often aided by maps, even on a very basic interpretive level. One would expect to find internet sites using them in the same way, as primary building blocks for general regional histories.

If you were trying to find a general history of a western U.S. state on the web where would be the first place you would look? Considering that authority and legitimacy are some of the most important issues when looking for sources for online history and that there are numerous unreliable web sources on every subject (this seems especially true about history where the internet allows everyman to be a historian), so we would want to find a source that has a certain legitimacy. There are a number of options, including several university and library websites and a few publications. However, it seems like the obvious first place to look would be the websites of the state historical society. These institutions by tradition and mission are devoted to educating the public about their state and regional history. Perhaps these societies websites would not be the first place to look if you were interested in a critical or detailed history. Still one would think to turn to them for a general overview. And, with these general overviews, one would expect to find maps. What we need to examine is how well the western state historical societies fit our expectations.

For this paper I am only looking broadly at historical presentation; instead I want to focus on whether these western state historical society websites use maps and how well they use maps in telling a historical story. Some of the factors used in evaluating internet map presentation are:

• Is a map readable or scalable?
  
• Is the map correlated to understandable modern reference points?
  
• Are maps integrated into the presentation or used only as illustration?
  
• Are there proper captions, citations, and map identification?
  
  

All western state historical societies have a web presence except New Mexico which does not have a society or an organization which occupies that role.

Arizona Historical Society, http://info-center.ccit.arizona.edu/~azhist/general.htm#about (Arizona has four historical societies representing different parts of the state. The Southern Division located in Tucson is the main branch.

There is no general state history on the website. It is primarily a promotional rather than an educational website. They have two online exhibits, “Many Health Traditions” and “Be the Historian: Using Photographic Evidence” Neither use maps.

They do provide a link to the University of Arizona E Text Center, which has reproduced a collection of older histories and books which have lost their copyright protection. This is a useful and important collection of texts. The illustrations from these books, including maps, have been reproduced but since they are copied from the books they are not scalable nor quality reproductions.

California Historical Society’s website, http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/, has one of the most developed historical presentations. It is designed around a timeline, with nine sections on the topics of “the physical setting,” “the first Californians,” “European exploration,” “Spanish colonial frontier,” “Mexican California,” “the gold rush,” “the impact of the railroad,” “economic ” and “the great depression.” Each of these sections has numerous subsections, providing short narratives of the people and events. There are at least twelve maps used throughout these sections; most are used earlier chronological periods, with few maps used to illustrate the 20th century. None of the maps are integrated with the text. They are used as separate illustrations, often with no explanation of their purpose. They are captioned with basic bibliographic information. The maps illustrating the text are less than 280 pixels wide and are usually barely readable at that size. One can click on a map to get an enlargement of approximately 700 pixels wide. However, these enlargements are often still not large enough to be readable. An example of this problem is this enlarged map: http://www.californiahistory.net/4_IMAGES/map_lrg.jpg which we can presumed from its context to show Californian missions, but it is impossible to tell that from the map itself. The California Historical Society presents just the sort of history one would expect to find. It is unfortunate that their use of maps within these presentations do not do justice to the maps in terms of physical display or intellectual analysis.

Colorado Historical Society, http://www.coloradohistory.org/, has a well designed site but with little historical content. It is almost entirely an promotional site for visiting their network of museums. There are four historical essays in their “For Kids Only” page, all biographical, none using maps.

Montana Historical Society’s website, http://www.his.state.mt.us/, has what seems to offer an abundant amount of material of historical topics where one would tend to find maps. One promising section is titled “A Student Guide to the Study of the State.” It offers a basic summary of the history, government, economy, and environment of the state. There are no maps and no illustrations—just text. Another promising section is called the Montana Heritage Project. It includes a considerable number of articles, mostly reprinted from other sources. A majority of these have one or two illustrations, not one map to be found, even in articles on places and trails.

In their curriculum section I thought there would definitely be maps. The introduction of one section tells us that “The lessons are designed in an interdisciplinary manner and include such disciplines as reading, writing, history, and geography. The activities that have been created promote the following skills: research, analysis, critical thinking, debate, reading, writing, map use, and teamwork.” The keywords, “geography,” and “map use” would lead one to think that they would present maps in this section, however, there are no illustrations.

Lastly they have sections setup on their website for online museum exhibits, online archival exhibits and online library exhibits. Unfortunately, when one selects either the museum or the library exhibits one gets an “under construction” message. The archival section, however, has several articles, including one on “Teaching With Historical Documents” which says that “Original documents can be an exciting addition to any school curriculum. Journals, diaries, ledgers, deeds, census records, minutes, and photographs can be reproduced easily and brought into the classroom to build skills in various disciplines.” Note that they do not mention maps. This seems to be an oversight which transcends the entire Montana Historical Society website. They have put a considerable amount of information on their website with little respect to presentation or the advantages of a web publication. Not a single map was found on their site.

The Washington State Historical Society website, http://www.wshs.org/index.htm, has no general state history, except for a very concise timeline with no illustrations. There is a fairly rich section on the Lewis and Clark expedition in preparation for the 2003 bicentennial of the expedition. This would seem to be a logical section to have maps. Mapping was one of the main purposes of the expedition and maps, if nothing else, could provide a visual reference to where they traveled. However, in the seventeen articles on aspects of the Lewis and Clark expedition, there are only two maps, both of them expedition drawings with no attempt at correlating them to present day locations. Most of the articles would be greatly enhanced with maps including four articles on place names and one article, “Knowing Your—Place: Lewis & Clark and the Invention of American Realism,” by James P. Ronda, which directly addresses the mapping process, yet without a single map to illustrate his case.