Thousands of old, beautiful maps are sadly being kept from the public that deserves them — sometimes by clumsy or unwieldy government ftp sites, and other times by archives with steep fees for research, and steeper fees for reproduction. Not anymore the BIG Map Blog offers Enormous historical maps with free full access.

Start exploring these amazing maps by checking the Chevalier map of San Francisco (1912) and the Map of the coast of Rio de Janeiro (1780).