Fire was a constant danger at the turn of the century in Pierce County, making fire insurance a big business. To help assess liability, agents relied on detailed maps created by the Sanborn Map Company. Today, these maps offer a fascinating window into the past.
Sanborn Map Company
Fire insurance maps show construction materials, water systems and other information that help fire insurance underwriters assess liability. The first ones were created in London in the late 1700s.
American companies began producing fire insurance maps in the mid-1800s. Demand skyrocketed after the Civil War as increased industrialization and immigration fueled the growth of cities and towns.
Through careful management and buying out their competitors, the Sanborn Map Company came to control the American fire insurance map market. Founded in 1867 by Daniel Alfred Sanborn (1827-1883), the company also produced maps for Canada and Mexico.
At its peak in the 1920s, Sanborn Maps employed over 700 people, including 300 field agents. Maps had to be frequently updated. The Tacoma Daily Ledger noted the visit of agent W. Steinke in October 1890. He spent ten days in the city compiling manufacturing and construction statistics to update a map made that spring. Editors were pleased at the development the map had shown in that short period of time, including dozens of new brick buildings and an expanded fire district. The maps, they argued proudly, showed a more prosperous industrial sector than rival city Seattle.
Accessing Pierce County Sanborn Maps
With its sawmills and wooden buildings, turn of the twentieth century Pierce County was no stranger to fire.
Sanborn produced fire insurance maps of Pierce County communities between 1885 and 1950, including a number of updates. Maps have been preserved of Alder, Buckley, Carbonado, DuPont, Eatonville, Elbe, Gig Harbor, Kapowsin, Orting, Puyallup, Roy, South Prairie, Sumner, Steilacoom, Tacoma, and Wilkeson.
Sanborn maps were originally lithographic prints, sold as both bound volumes and individual sheets, depending on the size of the town. The 1912 map of Tacoma is 113 pages, an exponential growth from 10 pages in September 1885. In contrast, the map of the coal mining community of Carbonado near Mount Rainier National Park, dated September 1913, is only four pages.
Many of Sanborn’s 700,000+ maps are now online.
A number of digitized Pierce County maps can be accessed for free through the Library of Congress (LOC). The Northwest Room at the Tacoma Public Library has a collection of bound Sanborn maps of Tacoma. They have also digitized the 1892 map.
The Washington State Library in Tumwater has a microfilm collection of Pierce County Sanborn maps, including ones not digitized on LOC. Images are in black and white.
Using Sanborn Maps
Sanborn maps contain a treasure trove of information for modern users. Genealogists can look up where their ancestors lived and worked. Researchers can track their community’s development. Checking maps can help date old photographs and allow historic preservationists to assess landmark buildings. The maps are also a great way to find potentially polluted sites like old dry-cleaning businesses and gas stations.
While Sanborn held high standards, the maps are not 100% accurate. Construction was ongoing, so what existed on the ground would never completely match the date on the map. Maps sometimes overlooked impoverished or minority neighborhoods.
Large maps, like those for Tacoma, opened with an overall view of the “congested” or business district and a description of the community’s water facilities and fire department. The 1892 Tacoma map, for example, noted that there were 225 fire hydrants and 61 firefighters in the city of 40,000 people. There is also an index of roads and important businesses, schools, government buildings and churches.
Sanborn maps were color coded to show construction materials. Examining the 1912 map of Tacoma, most buildings are tinted yellow to indicate frame/wood construction. The Catholic Church of the Visitation on South 58th Street is shaded pink, however, to show fire-resistant brick construction. The surveyor noted that the building had steam heat and electric lighting. Buildings across the street are private homes, marked “D” for dwelling and tinted yellow, indicating wooden construction.
To assess fire risk, building uses were often listed. In the detail from the intersection of Meridian and Stewart Streets in the February 1900 Puyallup map, businesses such as a drugstore and grocery store are listed, as well as the Hotel Puyallup and an ice house. The streets are 60 feet wide.
Maps included “x” marks for doors and solid lines to indicate walls. Types of heating sources and the location of fire-fighting equipment were also noted. In the 1912 Tacoma map, fire hose locations are carefully noted at the Comley and Bismarck sawmills near McKinley Avenue and East 58th Street. These precautions would prove inadequate two years later. Both mills were destroyed by a raging inferno, leaving three dead and many injured, including firefighters.
Sanborn Maps, Window to the Past
The Great Depression, World War II and changing methods of fire insurance liability assessment dried up demand for Sanborn’s maps. Today Sanborn Geospatial produces GIS data for businesses and governments.
A century or more later, Sanborn maps help us visualize a lost world. Historian John Repps might have been writing about bird’s-eye view drawings in his book “Panoramas of Promise,” but the same holds true of Sanborn maps. With the maps, we can “in our imagination approach their outskirts, visit their neighborhoods, walk their streets, admire their buildings, and appreciate the richness and variety of the urban scene in this region a century or more ago.”
