Old Maps of Louisville

1961 Louisville Transit Company System Map
Excerpts from TARC’s 1989 and 1999 System Maps
1932 Wagner Map of Louisville
Why Is It Called Outer Loop?
Coleman’s 1982 Map of Louisville
It's not a map: Louisville Railway Company Taylor–6th Timetable from 1950

The old page is also available. It’s much more wordy though.

1961 Louisville Transit Company System Map

Click to download.

This rather simple pocket map that fit on a letter-sized sheet of paper dates back to the Louisville Transit Company era (c. 1950–1974). A list of Louisville Transit routes in 1961:

2 — Second Street
4 — Fourth Street
6 — Sixth Street
11 — Portland
12 — Twelfth Street
15 — Market Street
17 — Bardstown Road
18 — Preston–18th
19 — Walnut Street
21 — Chestnut Street
22 — Twenty-Second Street
23 — Broadway
25 — Oak Street
27 — Hill Street
29 — Eastern Parkway
31 — Middletown Express
32 — Cane Run Road
34 — Crittenden Drive
36 — St. Matthews Feeder

This map is a revision of a base map created in 1954. It was found amongst some other maps of Lexington and Louisville I purchased on an eBay auction. The bus route numbering system was also created in 1954, and is still in use today, with very few exceptions.

Excerpts from TARC’s 1989 and 1999 System Maps

1989:

Shown here is the Transit Authority of River City’s 1989 system map, a larger full-color folded map designed by Icon of Kentucky that also displayed all city streets. I believe this design was originally published in 1981; it's also listed as a copyright date on this map.

1999:

Since 1989, TARC did not publish a system map until late in the 1990s. This one from 1999, designed by G. D. Nelson Mapping Services of Denver, CO, indicated each line with a different color, and a different convention indicated express routes. Only major roads were shown.

TARC’s current system and downtown maps are available as PDFs or in a Flash viewer (launches new window; requires Flash). They were redesigned for 2006, and show all city streets once again.

1932 Wagner Map of Louisville

Cover and map

Cover, folded out

Downtown Map:

This was glued to the inside of the cover. Handy!

Detail of Main Map:

Solid orange lines indicated streetcar lines; dotted orange lines indicated bus lines.

Why Is It Called Outer Loop?

This excerpt from a 1961 Gousha map of Louisville indicates that an original proposal for the outer beltway around Louisville was going to connect to the existing Cross-County Highway (now known as Outer Loop). Since then they decided to build a new alignment parallel to and south of the Cross-County Highway (on the current alignment of the Snyder), but somehow the Cross-County became Outer Loop anyway.

This comes from a 1964 Rand McNally map of Louisville. As of 1964 one portion of this Outer Loop was already open, providing a detour for I-64 traffic to Shelbyville Road until I-64 was completed closer to Louisville. The cloverleaf interchange between I-64 and the now Gene Snyder Freeway still exists in its original form as of December 2008.

Coleman’s 1982 Map of Louisville

A map of Louisville so bad it’s good.

Originally, Coleman’s map was quite a fine piece of black-and-white cartography. The city side showed all streets in the City of Louisville and displayed block numbers; the county side showed the entire county and all streets outside the City.

The Highlands section of the city map and the southeastern section of the county map are shown here. Their areas have seen almost no new streets added for decades as of 1982; their sections of the map have accordingly not seen sloppy changes like the ones shown below.

Brace yourself.

On suburban sections of the city and county maps, we see numerous changes done sloppily, with no consistent style, some hand-drawn. Old streets removed to make way for freeways were still displayed. The Middletown excerpt from the county map appears to contain large excerpts of Metro Graphic Arts cartography. Whether Metro Graphic Arts was plagirized, I can’t say.

One final note. Coleman's map did not cover Southern Indiana, nor any portions of Kentucky outside Jefferson County.