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1971 Map of Albert City

Name: 1971 Topographic Map of Albert City
Creator: U.S. Geological Survey
Published: 1973
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

USGS Topo · Published 1973

About this map

Marathon and Albert City anchor this agricultural landscape in northwestern Iowa, photographed in the late 1960s and field-checked in 1971. The map illustrates a dense network of early 20th-century transportation, featuring three major rail lines: the Chicago Rock Island and Pacific, the Chicago and North Western, and the Chicago Milwaukee St Paul and Pacific. These tracks define the orientation of the small towns and their grain elevators, while the surrounding townships of Poland, Marshall, and Fairfield are organized by a rigid grid of country roads.

Water features like Swan Lake and the winding Little Cedar Creek break the rectilinear pattern of the farms. For genealogists, the map is particularly useful for locating family plots in rural cemeteries, including Poland Cem, Swan Lake Cem, Smith Cem, Fairfield Cem, and Marshall Cem, often located at lonely crossroads or near the edges of township boundaries between Buena Vista and Pocahontas Counties.