What are Fire Insurance Maps?
Fire Insurance Maps are among the most detailed historical maps ever produced of American cities and towns. Created primarily between the late 1800s and the mid-1900s by publishers such as the Sanborn Map Company, E. Hexamer & Sons, Baist, Perris, and others, these maps were originally developed to help fire insurance companies assess the construction, occupancy, and fire risk of individual buildings. Unlike ordinary street maps, Fire Insurance Maps document remarkable detail at the building level. They identify building footprints, construction materials, number of stories, building use, street names, property boundaries, railroads, utilities, industrial facilities, water systems, and other features that often cannot be found on contemporary maps. Today, Fire Insurance Maps are an indispensable resource for historians, genealogists, archaeologists, architects, preservationists, environmental consultants, planners, surveyors, and property researchers. They provide a unique window into how American communities evolved over time and are frequently used to trace historical land use, identify former industrial operations, document building history, support environmental due diligence, and understand the growth and transformation of cities and neighborhoods. Our Fire Insurance Map Directory allows you to browse available maps by state, county, city, publisher, and year, making it easy to discover historical map coverage for locations across the United States.