Ancestry: NC State Research Guide. NC Digital Collections. DigitalNC. NC Maps. NC Online Historical Newspapers. NC Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. North Carolina Sanborn® Maps From 1867 to 1977, the Sanborn® Map Company of Pelham, New York, produced large-scale (usually 50 feet to the inch) color maps of commercial and industrial districts of some 12,000 towns and cities in North America to assist fire insurance companies in setting rates and terms. Each set of maps represented each built structure in those districts, its use, dimensions, height, building material, and other relevant features (fire alarms, water mains and hydrants, for example). The intervals between new map editions for a given town or city in the early decades of the twentieth century varied according to the pace and scale of urban growth — from a few years to more than five years. In all, Sanborn® produced 50,000 editions comprising some 700,000 individual map pages.
North Carolina Collection Sanborn® Fire Insurance Maps The North Carolina Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill holds the most comprehensive collection of Sanborn® maps in North Carolina. Duke University, NC. University of North Carolina, NC. IA: Pitt County Genealogical Quarterly.