A Meta Map of Maps in the Wild

Maps in the Wild is an online collection of maps found out in the world. You can share maps you find by emailing them or putting them on social media. Over the years I’ve submitted quite a few of them-more than I’d remembered. Here is an example-a map of the Damariscotta River in Maine overlooking the river.

A recent post highlighted that the map of maps in the wild is back. I wasn’t aware of it to begin with but they’ve been keeping worldwide map of all the submitted maps in the wild. A map of maps so to speak. 

For example, here is the Transcaucasian trail in Armenia. Each popup contains a link to the original post where you can get more (but usually not much more) information.

These maps vary in interest from “hey, I saw a truck with a globe on its logo” to cool artistic renderings on buildings. Some are indoors in places like museums. For a more grim example, here’s one from the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Here is one of my submissions and one of my favorite maps in the wild, a mural found in Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia.

There is a comment area where you can suggest corrections - several of my listings are not located correctly. Some are only few miles off while another one is almost 100 miles away. Also there’s the “null island” effect where a post without known or listed coordinates ends up at 0,0 in the Gulf of Guinea.

So if you see any great maps out there submit them. In the meantime let’s all get lost in Iceland.

Highest Mountain Railways

In my last post, I highlighted a graphic showing highest mountain peaks and lowest ocean depths via Attila Bátorfy's Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities. His latest post has another interesting one on a similar subject. The graphics are from newspapers and magazine published in Hungary in the early 20th Century. This 1907 drawing shows the world’s highest mountain railways in a sideways view.

-from Kincses Kalendáriom - A gyakorlati élet általános útmutatója (Treasure Almanac - A General Guide of Practial Living)—published by Jenő Rákosi’s newspaper company from 1896 until 1946. Source of graphic and caption-Attila Bátorfy. 

Here is an approximate (via Google) translation from the Hungarian text:

“The world’s highest mountain railways.
The picturesque panorama, fresh air, and the majesty of towering crags and ice fields attract vast crowds of tourists—especially in summer—to the highest mountain regions. However, since ascending just one kilometer in altitude—even on a good path—requires as much exertion as walking eight kilometers on flat ground, and not everyone possesses the iron-strong legs, lungs, and heart required for mountaineering, engineers have sought to make even the great mountain peaks accessible to non-climbers by constructing mountain railways. Railways of ever-increasing steepness are being built one after another, and we are not far off from the day when even Mont Blanc...“ (the text likely continues on the next page).

As a bonus graphic continuing the railroad theme, here is a map from the same collection.

Dezső Gáspár: Hungary’s foreign trade. 1932

Hickmann's Highs and Lows

In a recent post on Attila Bátorfy's Cabinet of Infographic Curiosities, he highlighted the Czech-born geographer and statistician Anton Leo Hickmann and his early contributions to data visualization. Hickmann’s most influential work, the Geographisch-statistischer Universal-Taschen-Atlas, was published in 1894. You can view it from the Austrian National Library. it’s full of interesting charts and maps but what got my attention was this diagram.

I’ve posted before about comparative mountain heights. There’s even a post on the David Rumsey Map Collection showing many different examples of these but this one is new to me. Note that I stitched two atlas pages together to make the image above. The title translated from German is “Idealized view of the most significant highs and lows“.

This graphic has two layers, the top one for mountain heights sitting over a layer of sea and ocean depths. The top panel shows Europe in the foreground and from left to right Africa, Asia, South America New Zealand, Australia and Hawaii. Mount Saint Elias (straddling the U.S. and Canada) is the only North America peak shown*, Denali must have been unknown to Hickmann. Here’s a detail with the Balkans in front and Amerika (mostly south and central) in the background.

The second layer has the ocean depths with major seas layered on top of them, a clever way of showing many bodies of water in the same illustration.

A second grouping underneath mirrors the top ones with a focus on the Alps atop the Mediterranean Sea and its affiliated bodies of water. Here’s a detail from the third and fourth panels with the Mediterranean and Ligurian Seas on the bottom, Bern on the foreground and some of the high peaks of the Alps in the background.

*Not counting Hawaii as North America. Also Mt Hooker is a name that appears in many places but none of them are close to 4185 meters.

For a deep dive into the rest of Hickmann’s atlas see Atilla’s post.

Earth Mapped

mapped.earth is a wonderful interactive global visualization from Aaron Becker. 

Here is an example showing winds and ocean currents along the south coast of Africa.

From the site: “Earth is a live view of the planet’s current conditions: winds, ocean currents, sea temperatures, storms, and the aurora, rendered as an interactive 3D globe over real terrain. The data refreshes itself around the clock — global weather models four times a day, ocean analyses daily, the aurora forecast every hour. Nothing here is a stock animation; every moving ribbon is advected through today’s measured or modeled fields.”

You can watch the globe spin or spin it yourself to pan and zoom to amy area of interest. Here is a Sunday image of the storm that spent the entire weekend and well beyond bearing down on us on the east coast of the USA.

There are many layers you can add. NO₂ is strikingly drawn though it is perhaps just a proxy for population.

Here is the actual population with population spikes showing an inverted terrain - low Himalayas surrounded by high populations.

And a giant dust plume coming off the Sahara.

The best part is watching the wind animations. In this case colored by temperature.

Erin Brockovich’s AI Data Center Map

I recently saw an interview with consumer advocate Erin Brockovich. She put together an interactive data center map to keep track of the data center issues across the United States.

For the screen shot above I unchecked the “Community Reported” red dots as they overwhelm the map. Those are places submitted by concerned residents. From the site “The colored data center pins cover publicly announced, major AI-focused and hyperscale facilities — including projects that were cancelled, blocked or shelved. Each popup lists its source citations. Many smaller or unannounced facilities are not listed, and this is not a registry of every data center in the country. Know of one missing? Report it here.”

You can click a point for details, including the data sources as seen below.

One of the major issues with data centers is how much water they use so one of the options is the use the NOAA’s drought monitor maps as a background layer.

Here is the map with everything showing. The most recent status of data centers shows up at the top. There are more of them under construction than are currently operational.

The noise nearby residents will need to endure is shown in these impact rings.

If you are within a quarter mile the noise is compared to a vacuum cleaner, 0.25 to 0.75 miles a dishwasher, while anything within 1.5 miles is still very audible and possibly disruptive to light sleepers. These noise levels are a 24-hour/7 day reality for those that live nearby. Another map shows places where states and local governments are acting to create bans or cancel some of these projects.

The site contains much more information including news, FAQ’s, photos and statistics presented in an even handed manner. 

Another Day in Ukraine

I got this image off social media-I honestly can’t recall where it came from. It’s originally from Telegram and supposedly* shows just one day of attacks on Ukraine-September 12th, 2026.

*I use the term supposedly because I have no way to verify this map.

Here is one from September 15th via Telegram. 

Translation via Google - “Throughout the day, approximately 150 attack and jet-powered UAVs of various types were deployed to attack the Kyiv, Odesa, Cherkasy, and Kirovohrad regions. In the Kyiv region, warehouses and gas stations were targeted.“

I found an almost identical image to the first one on Dima Lazarchuk’s LinkedIn page with the following words:

“On weekends, some people wake up to birds singing outside their windows, some to the sound of the sea, and some to the rustling of autumn leaves.

In Ukraine, we wake up to the sound of russian drones flying in to kill us, and to the sound of our air defense trying to stop them.

Another weekend survived in Ukraine.

Another reminder to the world that russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is still ongoing.”

The Growth of Los Angeles County

 I don’t know who to give credit for this as there does not appear to be an “About” page, but here is a web site where you can watch a video of the growth of Los Angeles County since 1880.

The full video includes a small amount of text describing the county’s growth. The page allows you to pick from several specific areas, pan and zoom around or enter an address. Remember Pasadena in 1982? Here is part of it.

Here is the entire county in 2026.

You can color code the buildings by decade or by height, though since they are also shown in 3D the height option seems a bit redundant.

Hovering over any block will get you some stats.

Here is a video where you can see the downtown area growing upwards over a few decades.