Sanborn maps have wealth of information on McCook homes

To answer my own question, which I seem to be doing more and more as I get older, the Water Works Park is today our Norris Park. How, you might ask, do I know this tidbit of history? No, I am not THAT old! I know it because the Genealogy library has Sanborn Maps for 1889, 1897, 1909 and 1921. The 1909 map shows the water works park location.

It also shows the McCook Brick Company as being located one mile west of the court house and the McCook Pressed Brick Company sitting one mile east of the court house. The city water plant and the McCook Electric Company plant were noted as being one mile south of the courthouse on the Republican River. We of course know that these were destroyed in 1935.

In 1909, the index for the maps also notes the changes in names for many of the streets when for some reason (perhaps they ran out of names to use) the city changed to alphabetical/numeric streets. Manchester and McFarland became West First and Second; Railroad, Dennison, Dodge, Douglas, Dearborn, and Dakota became A, B, C, D, E, and F. Main street remained the same, but Marshall, Madison, Monroe and Monmouth turned into East First, Second, Third and Fourth streets. If you take walks around the east end of town, you may still be able to see sidewalks with the house number and original street name pressed into them.

If you are trying to locate a business owned or operated by an ancestor, these maps are a great tool to use. Maybe your relative had the Pabst Brewing Company cold beer storage building in 1897. If he did, it was located in the alley between West First and Second in the 100 Block of McCook. McCook Roller Mills, owned by E. H. Doan, sat between East Third and Fourth right on what we now call A Street.

Large commercial buildings, schools, churches, etc., are all noted on these maps along with information on what services these buildings have. The fact that a building is served by water or electrical lines, whether it is heated by gas or coal and a general sketch of its' size and locations of porches, stairs, etc., are all noted which of course, made me wonder why we even have Sanborn Maps!

Here is the explanation offered by Wikipedia: "Sanborn Maps is an American publisher of historical and current maps of US cities and towns. The maps were initially created to estimate fire insurance risks."

D. A. Sanborn was a surveyor from Somerville, Massachusetts. Aetna Insurance hired him to prepare insurance maps of several cities in Tennessee. Before that, he had mapped several areas of the City of Boston using the scale of 50 feet to an inch. After working on the Tennessee project, Sanborn formed the D. A. Sanborn National Insurance Diagram Bureau in New York City. He appears to have begun registering his maps in 1883. The Sanborn map company is now located in Colorado. Many of the early maps are held by the Library of Congress.

When a visitor to McCook approaches you concerning the location of early businesses or homes, please remember to refer them to our genealogy library. We have many maps and city directories plus county wide plat maps to aide their search. Located at 110 West C, suite M-3, we are open on Tuesdays and Thursdays for research from 1-4 p.m.