Pivotal Los Angeles mapmaker and copyright warrior
During the early years of the 20th century, Laura L. Whitlock, “the official mapmaker of Los Angeles County” was the first woman cartographer in the United States to publish her work for the mass market and the first person in the country to win a federal lawsuit establishing copyright protection for future mapmakers.
Laura was born in Iowa but migrated west with her mother, first to Nebraska and later to Los Angeles in 1895. She again taught music at 6th and Hill, but by 1901, she took a job at a florist who shared quarters with a tourist information bureau.
In 1907, she was selected president of the Pacific Coast Travel club and commenced her career making and selling maps.
During this time she studied all manner of railroad and engineering maps, including Pacific Electric Railway, Los Angeles Railway and Los Angeles Motor Coach Company, and put together six plates of an official map of the city while working out of her office in the Los Angeles Times building.
Her maps reveal not just pre-freeway Los Angeles, or long gone neighborhood names like “Tropico”, but also her own love of L.A.’s extensive transit system and rail infrastructure.
Unfortunately, all of the originals were destroyed in the infamous bombing of the Los Angeles Times building on October 1, 1910, forcing her to rebuild from scratch, while defending against pirated copies of her maps.
Her highly detailed and prized maps are held by museums, the Library of Congress, and our own Metro Transportation Research Library and Archive. Metro is fortunate to have one of her final maps in its collection of art and history, a large 1927 Los Angeles transit map. It can be seen on the 15th floor just outside the Transportation Library and Archive’s front doors. It was gifted to our predecessor, the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission (1977-1993) by the City of Los Angeles to commemorate the opening of the A (Blue) Line in 1990.
Much more info on Laura L Whitlock and her map making career can be found in this Huntington Library online exhibit from 2019 and this Los Angeles Magazine article.
In 2010, Glen Creason released Los Angeles In Maps (New York: Rizzoli, 2010). Creason was the Map Librarian at Los Angeles Public Library and co-curated the landmark 2008-2009 exhibition L.A. Unfolded: Maps From The Los Angeles Public Library. The work guides readers through the variety of maps created for Los Angeles, from the 1849 Plan De La Ciudad De Los Angeles (“Ord’s Survey”) to modern day interactive maps. Within the Transportation section, we learn the story of Laura J. Whitlock, official mapmaker of Los Angeles County – and the only female map publisher in the United States when she was working in the early 20th century. Pirated copies of her work were widely distributed without her consent, and she filed suit for copyright infringement. We’ll leave it to you to discover what happened with this landmark case, but it did set a precedent for map copyright — an important contribution to American map history made here in Los Angeles. The rest of the transportation maps and information are equally interesting, as are the other subject areas covered, but you’ll have to read the book yourself to find out more.
We, however, maintain an online map collection titled Past Visions Of L.A.’s Transportation Future: Mass Rapid Transit Concept Maps. Here you will find an online gallery from 1925 to present-day, focusing on proposed rail and rapid transit plans over the years. We are hoping to bring more map resources online as time permits. (Above: 1925 Pacific Electric Route Map, click to enlarge. These old maps are full of intriguing tidbits, like Sunset Boulevard being the original Beverly Boulevard – as noted here).
Readers are also invited to explore our full-text digital collection of Los Angeles Transit And Transportation Studies, 1911-1957.
These documents also include rare maps and other illustrative material from L.A.’s transit and transportation history.