1961 Map of New Straitsville

About this map

Extensive Strip Mines dominate the topography of the Hocking Valley coal region in the early 1960s, reflecting an era of intensive industrial extraction across Wayne National Forest. The landscape is a network of company towns and mining settlements, where the Baltimore and Ohio and Chesapeake and Ohio railroads served as the primary arteries for coal transport. From the concentration of houses in Shawnee and New Straitsville to smaller locales like Buckingham and Drakes, the map records a high density of rural infrastructure. Numerous small family or community burial grounds, such as Springer Cem and Dugan Cem, alongside landmarks like the Lookout Tower, provide critical touchstones for genealogical research. The presence of the Ohio Company River Purchase boundary and the Congress Lands Boundary adds a layer of early 19th-century land survey history to this mid-20th-century record of industrial Appalachia.