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Description

An Airplane Map of Oregon in 1929

Wonderful vintage pictorial bird's-eye view of Oregon, by one of the state's best 20th-century mapmakers, Fred Routledge.

The map is oriented with north at the top, looking over the Pacific Coast and the southern part of the Cascades to the Columbia River. The topography is rendered in an exaggerated and pleasing fashion.

An inset of Portland to Mountain Hood ("The Columbia River Highway and Mt. Hood Loop") appears at the left. Numerous inset photos line the top and bottom edges on the right side.

The framing of the image as an "Airplane Map" indicates how air travel was beginning to influence American's understanding of geography. Although in the late 1920s, almost no one in the country had traveled on a commercial airplane, images taken from them were becoming more commonplace.

Rumsey has two examples, one dated 1916 and the other 1929, though truth be told, we cannot differentiate the two, and both have Routledge signatures that appear to be dated 1929.

Reference
Clinton, Craig. "The Pictorial Maps of Fred A. Routledge", Oregon Historical Quarterly Vol. 117, No. 1 (Spring 2016), pp. 36-75. Read here http://www.ohs.org/…
Fred A. Routledge Biography

Fred Routledge (1871-1936) was an Oregon artist and pictorial mapmaker, who spent much of his professional life as a correspondent for the Morning Oregonian. His career lasted from the 1890s to the early 1930s. Routledge was a well regarded artist, who received awards for his paintings, including a first prize at the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. His ephemeral work as a pictorial cartographer was also very well regarded.

Routledge was born in Abilene, Kansas, raised in Rockford, Illinois, and settled in the Portland area in 1886 with his family. He began working as an illustrator with the West Shore publication before its demise in 1891, thereafter finding wor at the Oregonian in 1895. The January 1, 1896 "Where Rolls the Oregon," is his first work of significant note.