What’s 150 years old, 11 feet long, and can get you from Grand Rapids to Quebec City in minutes?

C.R. Chisholm & Bros. was a Montreal-based publishing company that specialized in travel guide books as well as maps of Canada and the United States. Chisholm’s all round route panoramic guide of the St. Lawrence is a 150-year-old folded panoramic map of the St. Lawrence River that measures 11 feet 2 inches (340 cm) and shows points of interest along the route.

Curious to see what an 11-foot map looks like? Check out this video capture of Chisholm’s all round route panoramic guide of the St. Lawrence, 1870.

To get a closer look at the illustrations featured in the map, download the full version of this map from the Internet Archive. In the Internet Archive, press the “Show all files” button, and in the file listing, click on the last .pdf option.

Fun Fact: McGill Library has hundreds of maps, including many oversized panoramas and birds-eye views that are necessarily folded or rolled for practical storage. There are also a number of parchment scrolls in our rare holdings. Learn more about an 8-foot scroll held by McGill Rare Books and Special Collections and its careful conservation and temporary framing for the Canadian Museum of History for the 2019 traveling exhibition Medieval Europe – Power and Legacy.