This Time in History In these videos, find out what happened this month (or any month!) in history.#WTFact Videos In #WTFact Britannica shares some of the most bizarre facts we can find.Demystified Videos In Demystified, Britannica has all the answers to your burning questions.Britannica Explains In these videos, Britannica explains a variety of topics and answers frequently asked questions.Britannica Classics Check out these retro videos from Encyclopedia Britannica’s archives.They don’t publish the atlases anymore, but they do sell packets of old maps that can be folded out individually and examined – and that have the same clear plastic overlay feature first introduced by Ralph Preston more than 50 years ago. “I mean, he could sell anybody anything.” Ramus says many of those same dealers are still carrying the descendants of Ralph Preston’s earliest products.Īfter helping out with her father’s business for many years, Ramus now runs the company, now known as Northwest Distributors, herself. “He was just the most interesting effervescent outgoing personality,” Sue Ramus said of her father. For many summers, the couple would hit the road in a motorhome to visit those dealers and sell them more copies of the maps and atlases. In those early years of the vintage map business, Preston and his wife built a network of dealers around the Northwest at gift shops in museums and general stores.
It wasn’t long before that single 1878 map expanded in the first Historical Oregon atlas, with other states following in short order. “And he set up a little company at the time called Treasure Chest Maps, and sold them, one map at a time, to bookstores or gift shops or whatever he could talk people into purchasing for two dollars.” “He took it to a print shop, and they reproduced this map,” Ramus said. “One of his customers at the time showed him a map of Oregon from 1878, and he was absolutely enthralled,” Sue Ramus said.
And it was there – sometime in the late 1960s – when an old map changed the course of his life. By the 1960s, with help from his wife, he was running his own service station in Corvallis, Oregon. He made $12 a week and he gave his mother half for groceries.”Īfter serving in the Navy in World War II and then working for a time as a logger, Ralph Preston got into the service station business in his hometown. “And he said the local policeman knew was only 14, but he just turned the other way because all the able-bodied guys were at war. “He went to work at 14 driving a delivery truck for groceries,” Ramus said.
And, as if the old maps weren’t enough, Preston’s books are also packed with vintage photos, and often a poem or two. The atlases make no promises or guarantees of lost treasure, but the whiff of forgotten places and things waiting to be found is a kind of historic catnip to a certain demographic or armchair explorer. Users can flip through the pages of different maps from different eras and readily see and compare the changes over the decades – and perhaps even find, as language on the front covers tease, “Overland Stage Routes. Preston’s old atlases remain a valuable and distinctive resource because each volume features an assortment of public domain vintage maps originally published by governments, railroads, and other entities from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century. Or, if you’re lucky, you might find one on your parents’ or grandparents’ bookshelf. The volumes that cover the Pacific Northwest – Early Washington, Historical Oregon, and Early Idaho – have been out of print for many years, but copies can often be found for sale at online auction sites or from used booksellers.
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