Vintage Bike Maps

May, 1896 Robert's Cycling Road Map of Washington D.C., Maryland & Virginia

View full size version May 1896 Washington D.C. Cycling Map

This May, 1896 map covers cycling routes in Washington D.C., as well as portions or Maryland and Virginia.

I first found this map at the great ‘From Wheels to Bikes’ blog, which has a lot of excellent historical cycling content. They also link to the Library of Congress listing for the map, which you can find here. You eventually land on this page, which will let you download a high-res jp2 version that prints at about 100”x77” at 300dpi.

As ‘From Wheels to Bikes’ points out, there was a similar, but not identical map that was published in the Washington Times in May of 1896.

Interestingly, the ‘Roberts’ map was published in May of 1896, which is the same month the Portland, OR map that inspired this site was published. Coincidence, or was there a larger effort to get out cycling information around this time? If you know anything, send me a note.