Historical Maps

HIG provides high quality digital copies of maps which depict the landscape, built environment, and property ownership.  All maps provided by HIG are considered to be in the public domain (not restricted for public use by copyright laws) and may be reprinted for use in reports or other similar documents.
A complete set of historic and current maps can help answer these questions:

• Has the natural landscape been disturbed?
  
• What type of development has occurred?
  
• Who were the past occupants of a property?
  
• What types of chemicals, petroleum products or other materials were used, stored, manufactured or disposed of in the past?

Topographic Maps
At times the only map source for a property will be topographic maps.  These maps were first published in the late 1800s and now cover the entire United States.  Topographic maps show natural features such as wooded areas, lakes, rivers, wetlands and topographic relief.  Cities and towns are depicted along with individual structures in rural areas and man-made structures such as roads, railroad tracks, dams and bridges.  Certain land disturbance activities such as quarries, mines and ditches are often shown.

• HIG provides digital copies of current and historical 7.5 and 15 minute USGS topographic maps for the entire United States.
  
• All topographic maps are in color and include a scale bar, a north arrow and the year created/updated.
  
• HIG packages that include topographic maps are The "New" Standard, The Core, SkyView and HIG Historical Maps. You may also order topographic maps a la carte.

Fire Insurance Maps
Fire insurance maps were first published in the mid-1800s and were used by insurance companies to determine fire insurance costs.  These maps show details of urban and industrial areas such as roads and building footprints, information about the construction of buildings and the type of use or occupants of buildings.  From these maps you can note the location of wells, raw material storage locations and the locations of storage tanks containing chemicals and petroleum products.

HIG packages that include fire insurance maps are The New Standard, The Foundation and HIG Historical Maps.  You may also order fire insurance maps a la carte in a package called Fire Insurance Maps Plus (FIM+)

Atlases and Plat Maps
Maps under this heading include a variety of maps with varying detail including city atlases, county atlases, real estate atlases, and plat maps that were created for counties and municipalities.  These maps may show property owner names, lot lines, streets and other features of the built environment.  Some of these maps are in color and some show details similar to fire insurance maps such as buildings and other structures, construction materials used in structures and occupant names. 

HIG packages that include a search for atlases and plat maps are The "New" Standard and HIG Historical Maps.

HIG Historical Maps
This package includes all maps in the HIG collection that cover your site including:

• Topographic maps
  
• Fire insurance maps
  
• Atlases and plat maps

Our research will include searches for topographic maps and a variety of maps that show ownership and/or property boundaries such as real estate atlases, city and county atlases and plat maps.  We also include FIM+, our new fire insurance map research service.  FIM+ provides fire insurance maps from the HIG collection as well as details about how to access other maps via numerous map collections nationwide.

HIG Historical Maps can be purchased as its own package, but it is also included in our premier research package, The "New" Standard.