Titled Post Route Map of the State of Wisconsin Showing Post Offices, March 1, 1950, this authoritative state portrait captures Wisconsin at a decisive postwar moment when the Railway Mail Service still pulsed through nearly every county. Compiled by the United States Post Office Department, the map arrays a tight constellation of post offices across the Badger State, each point tied into a color-keyed lattice of transport lines that reveal how letters and parcels coursed from lakeshore cities to inland farms. Set on a precise polyconic projection and bounded by clearly delineated counties, it reads as both a logistical diagram and a civic census. From Milwaukee’s sprawling nexus to the Mississippi borderlands, the design renders movement legible, showing the routes that knit communities into a national communications system.

The map’s visual language marries clarity with density. Counties are crisply outlined to anchor jurisdictional responsibility, while a disciplined palette differentiates mail corridors and junctions. Route lines typically track the state’s rail beds, and the cartographer’s symbols mark interchanges where clerks and carriers shifted sacks, rerouted pouches, and kept schedules in metronomic time. The polyconic framework minimizes distortion across Wisconsin’s breadth, allowing the viewer to compare distances and service patterns from Green Bay’s harbor to the driftless west with confidence. One can follow the sweep of lines enfolding Lake Winnebago, trace crossings of the Wisconsin and Fox Rivers, and see how the routes braid through glacial uplands before fanning toward Lake Michigan, all while preserving the administrative geometry that governed delivery.

Produced by the United States Post Office Department as part of its nationwide post route series, this 1950 edition reflects a system at its operational zenith and on the cusp of reinvention. Railway Mail Clerks, working in swaying postal cars, sorted letters in transit along corridors defined here—many aligned with the Milwaukee Road, Chicago & North Western, and Soo Line. Yet the cartography also hints at the era’s evolution, with road-linked paths radiating from county seats and regional hubs as Highway Post Office experiments and expanding airmail began to influence routing. The result is a rare synthesis: a government planning tool tuned for cadence and interchange, and a documentary record of how the federal network threaded Wisconsin’s towns into continental circulation.

Urban gravity is palpable. Milwaukee dominates the southeast, dispatching strands north along the lakeshore through Racine and Kenosha and westward toward Madison’s capitol square and the industrial belt of Janesville. North of the Kettle Moraine, the Fox River corridor concentrates service, binding Appleton and Oshkosh to Green Bay and the Door Peninsula. Waukesha emerges as a suburban relay, while Eau Claire anchors the northwest, where lines shadow the Chippewa and St. Croix watersheds. Across the state, route density waxes and wanes with settlement and terrain, skirting marsh and moraine, bridging the Mississippi rim, and converging at railroad junctions that served as the system’s synapses. The pattern reads like a living atlas of commerce, governance, and daily life in mid-century Wisconsin.

As an artifact, the map offers layered insight. It shows not only where mail went, but why: the economic circuits, county hierarchies, and natural corridors that shaped federal service decisions. Each post office dot marks a promise kept at regular intervals; each junction symbol encodes the choreography of exchange that kept farms supplied, factories connected, and families in touch. The design’s disciplined precision—projection, color, and administrative outlines—embodies mid-century public cartography at its most pragmatic and elegant. For historians, collectors, and connoisseurs of American infrastructure, it is a master key to Wisconsin in 1950: a state rendered as a network, its communities illuminated by the very lines that carried their words to the world.

Cities and towns on this map

• Milwaukee
• Madison
• Green Bay
• Kenosha
• Racine
• Appleton
• Waukesha
• Janesville
• Oshkosh
• Eau Claire

Notable Features & Landmarks

• Detailed outlines of counties in Wisconsin.
• Locations of post offices throughout the state.
• Color-coded markings indicating various mail transport routes.
• Routes typically following railroad tracks.
• Indications of junctions for railroads within the postal network.

Historical and design context

• Map Title: Post Route Map of the State of Wisconsin Showing Post Offices ... March 1, 1950.
• Creation Date: March 1, 1950.
• Mapmaker/Publisher: United States Post Office Department.
• Historical Context of Maker: The map is part of a series from the United States Post Office Department, which played a crucial role in organizing mail routes across the nation, particularly post-World War II as the postal infrastructure evolved.
• Topics and Themes: The map details postal routes, post office locations, and incorporates railroads. It serves as a historical documentation of mail transport.
• Regions Shown: The entire state of Wisconsin.
• Design/Style: The map uses a polyconic projection, featuring outlined counties in a specific color to delineate geographical boundaries.
• Historical Significance: This map reflects the complex network of post routes used by Railway Mail Clerks, illustrating how mail was distributed at a critical point in the development of postal services in the U.S.

Please double check the images to make sure that a specific town or place is shown on this map. You can also get in touch and ask us to check the map for you.

This is a very large map that must be ordered at a large size, so that you can easily make out all of the details.

This map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 100in (250cm). 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.

The fifth listing image shows an example of my map personalisation service.

If you’re looking for something slightly different, check out my collection of the best old maps to see if something else catches your eye.

Please contact me to check if a certain location, landmark or feature is shown on this map.

This would make a wonderful birthday, Christmas, Father's Day, work leaving, anniversary or housewarming gift for someone from the areas covered by this map.

This map is available as a giclée print on acid free archival matte paper, or you can buy it framed. The frame is a nice, simple black frame that suits most aesthetics. Please get in touch if you'd like a different frame colour or material. My frames are glazed with super-clear museum-grade acrylic (perspex/acrylite), which is significantly less reflective than glass, safer, and will always arrive in perfect condition.

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.