The Greatest Paper Map of the United States You’ll Ever See

This is the perfect example of the little man vs. the big man, small business vs. mega corporations, little pharma vs. big pharma, and the analogies can continue, but I'll end it there as this blog is about a map.  Yep, a map.  And it's the greatest paper map of the United States you will ever see.

Before the power of smartphones people would buy paper maps at their local gas stations or supermarkets; Maps to cities, vacation spots, or their favorite destinations.  Hell, I remember buying city maps to Austin, San Antonio, Houston and Corpus Christi.

Well, in American mapmaking, the "Best of Show" award is the biggest honor one can achieve at the annual competition of the Cartography and Geographic Information Society.  Usually the big map makers like National Geographic, Rand McNally, C.I.A. Cartography Center and the U.S. Census Bureau wind up being the winner of this prestigious award. But not this time, the big award emerged from a little farmhouse outside of Eugene, Oregon.  It's creator? David Imus.

Imus worked on this map over a two-year period, and did it all on his own with no help.  He worked 7 days a week and nearly 6,000 hours before it was completed.  And he did it all by hand.

So what makes this map different from the Rand McNally version you can buy at a bookstore? Or from the dusty National Geographic pull-down mounted in your child’s elementary school classroom? Can one paper wall map really outshine all others—so definitively that it becomes award-worthy? [source]

Feel free to purchase this map directly from David Imus himself, visit his website at imusgeographics.com