For my final map, I wanted to find a Reference Map, so I searched for "Map of Western United States" to commemorate my journey from College Station, Texas to Los Angeles, California. I found this nice historical map from 1897 from the United States Digital Map Library (http://usgwarchives.net/maps/usa/usmaps/west1897.jpg). This map stood out to me amongst the field of modern maps my search yielded because of several features:
#1) On both the left and right borders, you find the names of Asian and European/African places which fall along the same latitudes depicted on this map. This feature would give foreign viewers a better sense of where they are compared to their homeland, and gives domestic viewers a better sense of where they fall in relation to the rest of the planet. This is an interesting alternative to the use of an inset to show a small world map with a box over the Western US to show the borders of this map.
2) Another interesting feature is this map still lists longitude under both the old convention (a country's capitol) and the standard of Greenwich.
3) Finally, I enjoyed seeing a few features which were important to a 19th Century cartographer, like "Gold Mines" and old Forts.
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