Urban Transit-Style River Maps

image by Daniel Huffman

Imagine that you’re a wayward adventurer, someone like John Wesley Powell in 1869, and you’re traveling down a mysterious and foreboding river. You know what’d be kind of nice? A map.

Even nicer, especially for us city slickers, would be a simplified map showing the whole river system, tributaries, forks, and all. That way, you know exactly which stop to disembark from your trusty raft.

Fortunately for us, Daniel P. Huffman, a cartographer at University of Wisconsin-Madison, has created a series of such maps. Done in the classic style of transit maps, his maps feature Northern California rivers, New England rivers, Columbia River, Colorado River, and even the mighty Mississippi.

Dave Schumaker
Dave Schumaker