Home for a weekend visit, daughter Sarah bounded into my office to discover an array of maps scattered across my desk. She scooped up one that had slid onto the floor and deposited it on the desk, delivered a quick hug, and helped herself to the glass of merlot perched among the paperwork.
“Where are you going?” she asked brightly.
“Nowhere yet.”
This was a common childhood sight in our home—Dad prowling through maps.
She plopped onto the couch and picked up a dog-eared DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer: Kentucky that was open to page 81. A faded blue highlight marked a small creek. She studied it for a moment.
“We’ve fished here!” she said.
“Yes, we have.”
She laid the map aside.
“You know you don’t really need these anymore.”
“Don’t need what?”
“These maps.”
I glanced over my shoulder to see the same grin she’d flashed as a youngster when straining to hold a stringer of bluegill.
“I don’t?”
“It’s all on your phone!”
“I like maps.”
“I know!” she said, springing to her feet and bounding from the room as quickly as she had appeared.
I both enjoy and value maps. I was raised in a loving home of limited means. Reading opened the world to me, but maps give it legs. Maps make it real. Maps make it reachable. Maps give it a name: Lake Ontario. Grand Teton. Green River. Weddell Sea. Cumberland Gap. Elephant Island. Black Sea. Gulf of Mexico. Names on the map are a foothold on history’s timeline, not chips to be shuffled on a political whim.
I suspect that the first maps were etched on clay or stone tablets and predate the written word.
Greek scholar Eratosthenes, who lived about 200 years before Christ, gets credit for producing one of the first world maps. His world was pretty small. He did come up with the idea of map grid lines—useful then and now.
About 1,500 years later, Gerardus Mercator’s 1569 world map greatly expanded on Eratosthenes’ effort and put sailors on the right path by showing lines of directions as straight lines, a major help in moving around the seas.
In 1784, John Filson (possibly with some help from Daniel Boone) produced the first map of Kentucky, eight years before Kentucky became the 15th state. Elihu Barker is credited with the first post-statehood map of the Commonwealth, but at that time, people of European descent had explored little of the far western section of Kentucky, and his 1793 map leaves what became known as the Jackson Purchase largely blank.
My favorite Kentucky mapmaker is Corps of Discovery co-commander William Clark, though most of Clark’s work was done far from his Kentucky home.
Clark was a military officer and skilled woodsman but enjoyed very little formal education, although he likely received some instruction from his surveying older brother (and Revolutionary War hero), George Rogers Clark.
William Clark assumed most of the mapmaking duties for the Corps of Discovery as the Lewis and Clark Expedition traveled from Camp Dubois near the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers along the Missouri River and across the Rocky Mountains to the Columbia River to the Pacific Ocean and back to St. Louis. His map of the West would have justified the enterprise had no other information been gathered. It was a stunning achievement, both in its accuracy and understanding of the geography of the newly acquired 530-million-acre Louisiana Purchase.
Using celestial readings when weather permitted, geographic observations and the daily calculation of dead reckoning, Clark measured the Corps’ distance traveled from Camp Dubois to the Pacific Ocean at 4,162 miles. It’s actually 4,122 miles, an error of less than 1 percent. That’s pretty good.
When Corps of Discovery co-commander Capt. Meriwether Lewis headed to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Thomas Jefferson following the Corps’ return in September 1806, he carried Clark’s maps with him. Lewis met with the president in December. Little is known of that meeting except this: The two men rolled out the maps onto the floor of the President’s House, as the White House was then commonly referred, got on their hands and knees, and studied them.
You can’t do that with Google.
• • •
Oct. 1 marks opening day of Kentucky’s catch-and-release trout season on 14 streams and creeks across the Commonwealth. All trout caught from these waters between Oct. 1 and March 31 must be released. Anglers are restricted to artificial lures. Statewide license requirements apply.
The delayed-harvest trout streams are scattered across 12 counties and total 86.6 miles of water. Details are at fw.ky.gov.
Kentucky deer hunters get their first shot at whitetail this month. Early muzzle-loading season, open in all zones, is Oct. 17-18. Special regulations apply to some areas.
A youth-only deer hunt—during which any legal weapon, including modern firearms, may be used—will be open Oct. 10-18 in all zones. The youth-only hunt is open to residents and non-residents but is only for hunters ages 15 and younger. Youth hunters using a firearm must be accompanied by an adult. Licenses and permits are required of hunters ages 12-15. Hunters 11 and younger are license exempt. Accompanying adults are not required to have a license.
For more information, check the 2026-27 Kentucky Hunting and Trapping Guide, which is available at most sporting goods outlets and where licenses are sold. The guide also is available at online at fw.ky.gov.
Readers may contact Gary Garth at editor@kentuckymonthly.com.