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1948 Map of Mason City

Name: 1948 Topographic Map of Mason City
Creator: U.S. Geological Survey
Published: 1963
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/

USGS Topo · Published 1963

About this map

Mason City and the surrounding prairie of Central Illinois are defined by a complex intersection of mid-century rail lines, including the Pennsylvania, Chicago And Alton, and Gulf Mobile And Ohio railroads. This network supported a landscape of small agricultural settlements and rural schoolhouses such as Honey Heart Sch and Spring Bank Sch. The terrain is shaped by the meandering courses of Salt Creek and Sugar Creek, where the boundaries of Mason, Logan, and Menard counties meet.

Industrial activity is noted at the Johnson Valley Mine, providing a glimpse into the local extraction history of the era. The map preserves the locations of numerous family-named landmarks and country burial grounds, from Irish Grove Cem to Sugar Grove Cem. These features, along with small junctions like Luther and Sweet Water, illustrate the distributed nature of rural life before the mid-20th-century shift toward larger regional hubs.