Rare Old Map of Norris Lake, Tennessee by USGS, 1936: Clinch River, LaFollette & Norris
Restored in our workshop from the original 1936 map and printed to museum-grade archival standards. Full description
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Choose two eligible works and receive 25% off both. You can mix and match both maps and art.
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The Collector’s Offer applies to eligible works in standard made-to-order configurations. Bespoke sizes, personalised designs and commissioned work are excluded. Products with “personalised” or “custom” in their name are generally excluded.
The offer is administered as two separate automatic discounts: one for smaller formats and one for larger formats. To qualify, you must purchase two eligible works within the same format group. Maps and art prints may be mixed and matched within each group.
For example, two eligible A4 or 8 × 10 in prints qualify for 25% off both. One smaller-format print and one larger-format work do not qualify together, as items from different format groups cannot be combined to meet the two-item requirement.
No discount code is required. Any qualifying discount is applied automatically in your basket and at checkout.
The Collector’s Offer
Choose two eligible works and receive 25% off both. You can mix and match both maps and art.
No code is required. The offer is applied automatically.
Full terms and conditions
The Collector’s Offer applies to eligible works in standard made-to-order configurations. Bespoke sizes, personalised designs and commissioned work are excluded. Products with “personalised” or “custom” in their name are generally excluded.
The offer is administered as two separate automatic discounts: one for smaller formats and one for larger formats. To qualify, you must purchase two eligible works within the same format group. Maps and art prints may be mixed and matched within each group.
For example, two eligible A4 or 8 × 10 in prints qualify for 25% off both. One smaller-format print and one larger-format work do not qualify together, as items from different format groups cannot be combined to meet the two-item requirement.
No discount code is required. Any qualifying discount is applied automatically in your basket and at checkout.
Restored in London • Printed and framed in Canada
Restored from the original 1936 map and printed to museum-grade archival standards. Full description
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If you want to add a gift message, or a finish (jigsaw, aluminium board, etc.) that is not available here, please request it in the "order note" when you check out.
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Published in 1936 by the U.S. Geological Survey, “Mc Lean Rock” captures a dramatic Tennessee landscape at a moment of profound transformation....
Continue readingPublished in 1936 by the U.S. Geological Survey, “Mc Lean Rock” captures a dramatic Tennessee landscape at a moment of profound transformation. Drawn at a scale of 1:48,000, this advance planimetric sheet records the newly altered geography around Norris Lake, the reservoir formed by damming the Clinch River. Its title, modest and local in tone, belies the significance of the terrain it depicts: a region where Appalachian ridges, river valleys, rural roads, and emergent New Deal infrastructure converged. The map’s careful rendering of natural and man-made features gives it the quality of a working document—one made not merely to describe the land, but to help understand, administer, and reshape it during one of the most ambitious public works eras in American history.
The map belongs to the cartographic legacy of the U.S. Geological Survey, an institution founded in 1879 to bring scientific order to the nation’s varied landscapes. By the 1930s, USGS mapping had become indispensable to engineers, planners, geologists, and government agencies, especially in regions undergoing rapid infrastructural change. Here, the agency’s disciplined style is evident in the clear hierarchy of roads, streams, county lines, settlements, and relief. Dashed roads trace rural connections across the hills, while the contours and hachured forms convey the steepness and complexity of the surrounding terrain. The result is a map that balances precision with visual richness, presenting Campbell and Anderson Counties as a lived-in Appalachian landscape of farms, hollows, ridges, chapels, and small communities.
Norris Lake dominates the geographical story of the sheet. Created by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Norris Dam on the Clinch River, the reservoir was among the landmark projects of the New Deal, intended to provide flood control, hydroelectric power, navigation improvement, and regional economic development. In 1936, the lake was still a recent intervention, transforming narrow river bottoms and tributary valleys into long, branching arms of water. This map therefore preserves a compelling transitional view: the ancient drainage patterns of the Clinch River system overlaid by a modern reservoir that would permanently alter settlement, agriculture, transportation, and recreation. Today Norris Lake is known for boating, fishing, and scenic mountain shorelines, but here it appears in its earliest mapped identity as a monumental engineered landscape.
The surrounding place names give the map an intimate regional character. LaFollette, Winfield, Catoosa, Norris, Smith’s Chapel, and Gypsy Valley appear within a network of roads and valleys that reveal the pattern of rural East Tennessee life in the early twentieth century. Highway 441 and smaller dashed routes suggest both access and difficulty: travel followed the contours of the land, slipping through gaps, skirting slopes, and linking scattered settlements. The map’s treatment of unnamed hollows, ridges, and points is equally evocative, conveying a terrain where local knowledge mattered as much as formal geography. Campbell County and Anderson County are shown not as abstract administrative units, but as textured mountain country, defined by watercourses, ridge lines, and the human pathways threaded between them.
As an artifact of 1936, “Mc Lean Rock” also reflects the broader atmosphere of Depression-era America. Federal mapping, dam building, rural electrification, and land management were all parts of a sweeping effort to modernize regions that had long been economically isolated. The Norris area became a showcase for that ambition, with the nearby town of Norris planned as a model community for workers and administrators connected to the dam project. Against this historical backdrop, the map offers more than topographical information: it records a landscape at the intersection of nature, policy, engineering, and everyday life. Its mountains and ridges speak to geological time, while its roads, reservoir, and settlements speak to a decisive human moment when the Tennessee Valley was being reimagined for a new century.
Cities, towns and places on this map
- Norris Lake
- Clinch River
- Campbell County
- Anderson County
- Highway 441
- Smith's Chapel
- Gypsy Valley
- Winfield
- LaFollette
- Catoosa
- Norris
- The surrounding mountains and ridges
- Various unnamed points and valleys
- Road networks shown in dashed lines
Historical context & cartographic details
- Published in 1936 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
- Topographical map at a scale of 1:48,000.
- Advance planimetric map, showing detailed natural and man-made features.
- Focuses on the Norris Lake area in Tennessee, a significant geographical and recreational landscape created by damming the Clinch River.
- Uses hachures and contour lines to show elevation changes and the mountainous terrain around the lake.
- Created during the Great Depression, shortly before U.S. involvement in World War II.
- Documents a region that has since changed through shifts in land use, development, and recreation.
Looking for a particular place? Review the detailed images to confirm that the town, landmark or feature you have in mind appears on the map. If you are unsure, ask our workshop to check before you order.
Detailed maps are especially rewarding at larger sizes, where names, boundaries and decorative features have more room to be appreciated. Use the close-up preview and size guide to choose the right scale for your wall.
This map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 50in (125cm). If you are looking for a larger map, please get in touch.
The model in the listing images is holding the 16x20in (40x50cm) version of this map.
Where personalisation is available, you can add a short title or dedication, mark one meaningful place, or request one considered visual detail. See personalised map examples.
Every piece is printed to museum-grade archival standards using fade-resistant pigment inks on acid-free matte paper. Choose an unframed map print, framed map or canvas using the finish options above. Framed maps use crystal-clear optical acrylic and arrive ready to hang.
With its rich detail and strong sense of place, this map makes a considered gift for a new home, anniversary, retirement or anyone with a personal connection to the area shown. Still deciding? Explore our collection of rare old and vintage maps to discover another place, period or style.
This map is also available as a float framed canvas, sometimes known as a shadow gap framed canvas or canvas floater. The map is printed on artist's cotton canvas and then stretched over a handmade box frame. We then "float" the canvas inside a wooden frame, which is available in a range of colours (black, dark brown, oak, antique gold and white). This is a wonderful way to present a map without glazing in front. See some examples of float framed canvas maps and explore the differences between my different finishes.
For something truly unique, this map is also available in "Unique 3D", our trademarked process that dramatically transforms the map so that it has a wonderful sense of depth. We combine the original map with detailed topography and elevation data, so that mountains and the terrain really "pop". For more info and examples of 3D maps, check my Unique 3D page.
Published in 1936 by the U.S. Geological Survey, “Mc Lean Rock” captures a dramatic Tennessee landscape at a moment of profound transformation. Drawn at a scale of 1:48,000, this advance planimetric sheet records the newly altered geography around Norris Lake, the reservoir formed by damming the Clinch River. Its title, modest and local in tone, belies the significance of the terrain it depicts: a region where Appalachian ridges, river valleys, rural roads, and emergent New Deal infrastructure converged. The map’s careful rendering of natural and man-made features gives it the quality of a working document—one made not merely to describe the land, but to help understand, administer, and reshape it during one of the most ambitious public works eras in American history.
The map belongs to the cartographic legacy of the U.S. Geological Survey, an institution founded in 1879 to bring scientific order to the nation’s varied landscapes. By the 1930s, USGS mapping had become indispensable to engineers, planners, geologists, and government agencies, especially in regions undergoing rapid infrastructural change. Here, the agency’s disciplined style is evident in the clear hierarchy of roads, streams, county lines, settlements, and relief. Dashed roads trace rural connections across the hills, while the contours and hachured forms convey the steepness and complexity of the surrounding terrain. The result is a map that balances precision with visual richness, presenting Campbell and Anderson Counties as a lived-in Appalachian landscape of farms, hollows, ridges, chapels, and small communities.
Norris Lake dominates the geographical story of the sheet. Created by the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Norris Dam on the Clinch River, the reservoir was among the landmark projects of the New Deal, intended to provide flood control, hydroelectric power, navigation improvement, and regional economic development. In 1936, the lake was still a recent intervention, transforming narrow river bottoms and tributary valleys into long, branching arms of water. This map therefore preserves a compelling transitional view: the ancient drainage patterns of the Clinch River system overlaid by a modern reservoir that would permanently alter settlement, agriculture, transportation, and recreation. Today Norris Lake is known for boating, fishing, and scenic mountain shorelines, but here it appears in its earliest mapped identity as a monumental engineered landscape.
The surrounding place names give the map an intimate regional character. LaFollette, Winfield, Catoosa, Norris, Smith’s Chapel, and Gypsy Valley appear within a network of roads and valleys that reveal the pattern of rural East Tennessee life in the early twentieth century. Highway 441 and smaller dashed routes suggest both access and difficulty: travel followed the contours of the land, slipping through gaps, skirting slopes, and linking scattered settlements. The map’s treatment of unnamed hollows, ridges, and points is equally evocative, conveying a terrain where local knowledge mattered as much as formal geography. Campbell County and Anderson County are shown not as abstract administrative units, but as textured mountain country, defined by watercourses, ridge lines, and the human pathways threaded between them.
As an artifact of 1936, “Mc Lean Rock” also reflects the broader atmosphere of Depression-era America. Federal mapping, dam building, rural electrification, and land management were all parts of a sweeping effort to modernize regions that had long been economically isolated. The Norris area became a showcase for that ambition, with the nearby town of Norris planned as a model community for workers and administrators connected to the dam project. Against this historical backdrop, the map offers more than topographical information: it records a landscape at the intersection of nature, policy, engineering, and everyday life. Its mountains and ridges speak to geological time, while its roads, reservoir, and settlements speak to a decisive human moment when the Tennessee Valley was being reimagined for a new century.
Cities, towns and places on this map
- Norris Lake
- Clinch River
- Campbell County
- Anderson County
- Highway 441
- Smith's Chapel
- Gypsy Valley
- Winfield
- LaFollette
- Catoosa
- Norris
- The surrounding mountains and ridges
- Various unnamed points and valleys
- Road networks shown in dashed lines
Historical context & cartographic details
- Published in 1936 by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).
- Topographical map at a scale of 1:48,000.
- Advance planimetric map, showing detailed natural and man-made features.
- Focuses on the Norris Lake area in Tennessee, a significant geographical and recreational landscape created by damming the Clinch River.
- Uses hachures and contour lines to show elevation changes and the mountainous terrain around the lake.
- Created during the Great Depression, shortly before U.S. involvement in World War II.
- Documents a region that has since changed through shifts in land use, development, and recreation.
Looking for a particular place? Review the detailed images to confirm that the town, landmark or feature you have in mind appears on the map. If you are unsure, ask our workshop to check before you order.
Detailed maps are especially rewarding at larger sizes, where names, boundaries and decorative features have more room to be appreciated. Use the close-up preview and size guide to choose the right scale for your wall.
This map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 50in (125cm). If you are looking for a larger map, please get in touch.
The model in the listing images is holding the 16x20in (40x50cm) version of this map.
Where personalisation is available, you can add a short title or dedication, mark one meaningful place, or request one considered visual detail. See personalised map examples.
Every piece is printed to museum-grade archival standards using fade-resistant pigment inks on acid-free matte paper. Choose an unframed map print, framed map or canvas using the finish options above. Framed maps use crystal-clear optical acrylic and arrive ready to hang.
With its rich detail and strong sense of place, this map makes a considered gift for a new home, anniversary, retirement or anyone with a personal connection to the area shown. Still deciding? Explore our collection of rare old and vintage maps to discover another place, period or style.
This map is also available as a float framed canvas, sometimes known as a shadow gap framed canvas or canvas floater. The map is printed on artist's cotton canvas and then stretched over a handmade box frame. We then "float" the canvas inside a wooden frame, which is available in a range of colours (black, dark brown, oak, antique gold and white). This is a wonderful way to present a map without glazing in front. See some examples of float framed canvas maps and explore the differences between my different finishes.
For something truly unique, this map is also available in "Unique 3D", our trademarked process that dramatically transforms the map so that it has a wonderful sense of depth. We combine the original map with detailed topography and elevation data, so that mountains and the terrain really "pop". For more info and examples of 3D maps, check my Unique 3D page.
Many of our maps and art prints are chosen as thoughtful gifts for homes, offices, studies and meaningful places.
Choose a framed option for the easiest ready-to-hang gift, or choose an unframed print if the recipient may prefer to select their own frame.
We make orders locally in 24 countries around the world, so gifts can often be produced close to the recipient. This helps them arrive faster, travel more safely, and avoid customs or import duty surprises.
- We can deliver directly to the recipient
- Framed pieces arrive ready to hang
- Unframed prints are carefully packed in a strong protective tube
- Almost every order is made locally, for faster, safer gifting
- 90-day returns give the recipient time to decide
If you are not sure what to choose, please contact us. We can help you pick the right map, size, finish or delivery option.
Most orders are made locally and delivered in around 2–3 working days, depending on the product, size and destination.
We print and frame maps and artwork in 24 countries around the world, so your order is usually made close to you or your recipient. That means faster delivery, less time in transit, and no customs or import duty surprises.
Personalised and customised pieces usually take an extra 1–2 working days, because we prepare your design and send it to you for approval before printing.
Very large framed orders can take a little longer, as they need extra care in production and delivery.
Every order is carefully packaged: unframed prints are sent in a strong protective tube, while framed pieces are securely packed with protective materials around the frame.
If you need your order by a particular date, please contact us before ordering. We’ll check the best production route and delivery option for your location.
Express delivery is available at checkout for most countries. Next-day delivery is available in the UK, US, Singapore and the UAE.
Your order is covered by our 90-day returns policy and 10-year guarantee.
Our standard frame is a gallery-style black ash hardwood frame, with a simple, modern look. It is approximately 20mm (0.8in) wide. You can also view some lovely customer photos of framed maps and art.
We use super-clear acrylic glazing, also known as Perspex or Acrylite, instead of traditional glass. It is lighter, safer, and has lower reflectivity, giving the artwork a clearer, cleaner appearance.
Six standard frame colours are available at no extra cost: black, dark brown, dark grey, oak, white, and antique gold. Custom framing and mounting/matting is also available for customers looking for something more specific.
Most maps, art prints, and illustrations are also available as a framed canvas. We use matte cotton canvas, stretch it over a sustainably sourced wooden box frame, and then float the piece within a wooden outer frame. The finished result is beautifully presented, with no glazing between you and the artwork.
All frames are supplied ready to hang, with either string or brackets fitted to the back. Very large frames will include heavy-duty hanging plates and/or a mounting baton. If you have any questions, please get in touch.
We can also supply old maps and artwork on canvas, foam board, cotton rag, and other materials.
If you would prefer to frame your map or artwork yourself, please read our size guide before ordering.
We work with interior designers, hospitality businesses, property professionals, offices and corporate buyers on individual pieces and larger coordinated projects.
This map can be adapted for a particular wall, room or project, and our workshop can help coordinate the dimensions, material and framing before production.
- Exact, oversized and made-to-measure dimensions
- Custom framing, mounting and alternative materials
- Coordinated pieces for several rooms or locations
- Map personalisation, to mark important locations or add extra details
- Map and framing guidance from our workshop
- Local production for projects around the world
Every Unique Maps piece begins with an authentic cartographic source or an original design from our London studio.
For our historic maps, we source rare originals from libraries, archives, auction houses and private collections around the world. We carefully restore each map for print—repairing age-related damage, balancing colour and improving clarity while preserving its original detail, texture and character.
Once restored, the map is prepared for your chosen size and finish. Your piece is then printed and, where selected, framed close to its delivery destination.
Our map prints use acid-free 200gsm archival matte paper and fade-resistant pigment inks, creating a rich, non-glossy finish designed to last. Framed maps use crystal-clear optical acrylic and arrive ready to hang.
Canvas, cotton-rag and other specialist presentations are also available. Learn more about our materials and finishes.
Personalising your map
You can add a short title or dedication, mark one meaningful place, or request one considered visual detail. For personalised designs, we send a proof before printing and you can request changes before approval.
For more complex bespoke commissions, contact our design team.
Original or Aged
Choose Original for true-to-source colour, or Aged for a warmer, richer antique character created with our specialist ageing process. See examples of our Aged maps.
We’ve been restoring and producing maps and art prints since 1984, and we stand behind every piece.
Every order is covered by our 10-year guarantee and damage-free delivery guarantee. If your piece arrives damaged, we’ll replace or remake it free of charge. If anything else isn’t right, contact our workshop team and we’ll put it right promptly.
See our returns and refund policy for full details.
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