Fairmont State GeoSavvy Guide: Home

The United States of America laid down from the best authorities, agreeable to the Peace of 1783 from the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650 USA dcu http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gmd/g3700.ct000080

Maps and the U.S. Constitution

Constitution Week in the United States

Did you know the U.S. Constitution requires a Census every ten years (Article I, Section 2) to apportion representation—an effort that, in the 1790s, meant surveyors on horseback sketching population counts by hand and creating early maps of the young nation?

Today, map librarians preserve these paper maps and make them accessible through digitization (computer scanning) in collections:

U.S. Library of Congress Maps 

Maps and atlases have been an important part of the collections of the Library of Congress since its beginning in 1800, when a joint congressional committee purchased three maps and an atlas from a London dealer. - U.S. Library of Congress

U.S. Census Atlas

David Rumsey Map Collection

The David Rumsey Map Collection is a free collection of over 200,000 maps from 1550 to the present.

Want to learn more? 

The National Archives resource list for Observing Constitution Day.

The Constitution and Census LibGuide (University of Rhode Island)

Check out this Wikipedia article on Population and Housing Censuses by country to find out when census started worldwide.