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The art of the mapmaker The folks at Raven Maps know all about Oregon�s place in the world By Paul Fattig Stuart Allan is putting places like Remote and Greenhorn on the map. "Yeah, Remote is definitely a remote hamlet," the Medford cartographer said of the wee burg west of Roseburg. "Greenhorn? That�s an incorporated city of three up on the Grant-Baker county line," he added. Allan, owner of Allan Cartography, and his business partner, Mike Beard, at Raven Maps & Images are, along with their staff, busy putting together a comprehensive new Oregon atlas scheduled to be available late next summer. The cartographer can tell you Island City isn�t a coastal community, but a town in northeastern Oregon. He knows there are precious few trees in Christmas Valley. "And that Boring is on the road to Damascus," he observed. For a quarter of a century, Allan has been mapping out the world from his office in Medford. He and Beard, who has a marketing background, teamed up in the 1980s. Their work has literally put them on the map of success. The Wall Street Journal has judged Raven�s work as "the world�s most beautiful maps." The firm now sells about 40,000 maps a year, many of them large wall maps purchased by individuals. "We pay more attention to the art of map-making than most cartographers," Allan said. "A good map always incorporates a great deal of artistry. If it�s a really good, easy-to-read map full of information, you can be sure a huge amount of artistry went into that." There are political maps, population maps, soil maps, vegetation maps, water maps, even maps showing locations of newspapers. Allan, who had a bachelor�s degree in history from the University of California at Berkeley, became interested in cartography while completing a master�s degree in geography at the University of Oregon. His wife, Karen, now a Medford attorney, was attending law school at the university at the time. In the mid-1970s, Allan began working on an Oregon atlas to be published in 1976 for the hundred-year anniversary of the university�s founding. "That�s really where I learned cartography as a practical trade," he said. "It started out as a graduate research assistantship, then evolved into an 80-hour-a-week job before it was over. It was great training." When he started, he spent a lot of time hovering over a light table. Now cartographers spend long hours in front of computer screens. "One of the things that makes cartography fascinating is the changing technology," he said. "I love it. If you don�t love practically obsessing over details in a map, then you are in the wrong line of work." Those details are forever changing, he noted. "For example, in the Bear Creek Valley here, all the old maps have Seven Oaks on them," he said, referring to a site just north of Central Point. "It was a railroad siding," he explained. "Railroads used to be how everything moved, therefore railroad siding names were important." Still, cartographers are reluctant to erase something from a map since it represents a landmark for many. "If there is something on a map, we are very loathe to leave it off," added Allan, a member of the Oregon Geographic Names Board. There is also an addition to the upper Bear Creek Valley in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, designated by the president earlier this year. All of the changes made in the state will be included in the new 320-page Oregon atlas. The atlas will begin with how Oregon fits in the world on the grand scale, complete with state-of-the-art computerized images. But viewers will also have a historical perspective. One map will be a copy of an illustration by Old World cartographers showing a 1762 view of what is now Oregon. "Right here is the Great Bay of the West," Allan said, pointing to a huge body of water where Oregon should have been. "That was based on an observation in 1500." Map-makers have made substantial inroads, he said. "The world is in constant change," Allan said. "Cartographers are never going to run out of work. It�s a big planet." Particularly if you live in Remote. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.