Very cool! I like antique things like this. My mid-'60s preamp came with the schematic, and I've debated framing it. I also have 1940s reprints of some turn of the century topographic maps of areas I've hiked. The maps are great because there are some known inaccuracies, obsolete names and some now-abandoned trails (including one Vice President Roosevelt hiked the day President McKinley died). I do plan to frame those. I think they, like your manual, just look fantastic.
I would love to see both your maps and steve's patent drawings. Don't get me wrong, CAD designs are awesome in their own way, but there's something about stuff drawn the old fashioned way that makes them so cool. Especially, something as intricate as a topographic map.
I left steve a note on it. See below for loads of online maps.
There are some high quality scans online! The Mount Marcy quadrangle covers Mount Marcy, the highest point in New York. The 1953 map shows a trail in the bottom left of the southwest corner that goes up Twin Brook. This is the trail Roosevelt took, and it has since been abandoned. Online reports say Hurricane Irene wiped out any remaining signs of the trail. Also of interest in the SW corner in the 1895 map is McIntyre Mountain. The primary summit is now called Algonquin with McIntyre describing the range. Again in the SW corner just west of the Twin Brook is Cliff Mountain, and the map shows it over 4000'. Modern surveys have it under 4000' now. There's a peak bagging list of summits here to hike all 4000+ foot summits, and Cliff (and a couple others) are included because they were over 4000' on these old maps when two hikers and their guide first hiked the full set.
They don't! I picked up a mint one for $25 and a couple used ones for $12/each. The frames will be the real investment. I have four that are an inverted T shape, so I might get the two corners to make a 2x3 shape. I think the cost depends on rarity, and these were sort of mass produced.
Yeah, framing can be expensive. When I had my car ads professionally framed it cost about 10 times more to frame than the ads themselves cost and we're talking about magazine pages. To be fair, I did choose acid free matting, UV protective glass, the whole nine yards. But damn, framing is expensive. Anything you can do to save money on something as big as maps could really help put a dent in that.