In Washington: There's Life in Old Maps

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On a wall near by was a poster, a blue-jeans advertisement featuring a naked fanny. Wolter indulges this fancy in his workers. The Geography and Map Division is, after all, in a basement of the James Madison Memorial Building on Capitol Hill--93,000 sq. ft., more than two acres, containing 6,000 five- drawer steel cabinets holding 3,924,000 maps--and it is only natural for laborers in a windowless environment to post themselves the odd eye-catching diversion. And do they labor! Tedious, hard work, cataloging and restoring, among other duties. Unlike some bureaucratic warrens in the District of Columbia, in this office not a single cobweb was seen growing between someone's lower lip and the space bar on a typewriter.

From World War II topographical maps on rubber, showing atolls and Japanese gun emplacements, Wolter proceeded to a section of American county atlases. Drawn up for insurance underwriters years ago, they are invaluable to urban historians, he said. Here is Alachua, Fla., in November 1912. This building had a tin roof, this one was frame-sided and had gas heating. "I ran across an old one of Tombstone, Ariz., the other day. There it was, the O.K. Corral. The O.K. Corral."

Wolter kept knocking around on ships after the war, then went to Korea as % an Army private, then took a few more ships before returning to Minnesota to pick up a degree in geography, then a master's, then a doctorate. He picked up a wife and four boys too, one of whom today is a geographer, which leads Wolter to a pet peeve: "Geographical illiteracy in this country is an absolute fact. In our day geography was addressed as a separate subject, as was civics. Remember civics? It wasn't this bouillabaisse they call social studies today, that hodgepodge. We don't give these kids the education anymore, and I'm not just talking about place locations on a map. We don't give them a formal education on what goes on, and why, elsewhere in the world. How many of them could tell you where Guatemala is?"

Wolter, at the moment, was in China, holding a map drawn in 1635. From there he went on to a scroll map, 60 ft. long, with a silk backing, done in the 1840s. "Some of these are just fabulous," he said, producing a lacquered bamboo fan, early 19th century, depicting Korea and Japan, with a gazetteer of place names on the flip side.

Then out came Samuel de Champlain's 1606-07 effort. "See Cape Cod. The Gulf of Maine. Here is the Maine coast up to Nova Scotia. Look. You can see Champlain's anchorages." Out came atlases on lambskin, kidskin, calfskin. "See how the Red Sea is always colored red?" Atlases with fleurs-de-lis, compass roses, Virgin Marys, ships in battle.

In his office, Wolter allowed that he had got his 20-year pin from the Federal Government and that he couldn't be happier. "There is an old Elizabethan saying: 'Geography without history hath life and motion, but very unstable, and at random; but history without geography, like a dead carcass, has neither life nor motion at all.' "

All well and good, you say, but how is the chief of the Geography and Map Division of the Library of Congress at refolding a road map? "Terrible. No better than the next guy. Those things are awful."