Loveland Pictorial Map (1943)

This map was drawn by illustrator Ernest Dudley Chase and published under his own imprint in 1943.

This is one of the few Chase maps that does not depict a real place, but imagines a fictional world. More specifically, Loveland, the land of love. The depiction mixes the sentimentality of greeting cards with a halo of the standard cartography of the time. The land of this world is shaped like a heart, while inside it contains multiple images that refer to an allegorical geography related to love: the road of Lovers, the Great Wall of Affection, the cape of Adoration...

This curious map is important to understand in its historical context. It was published in the United States in the context of World War II, in a year when many American soldiers had already enlisted in the army and abandoned their partners. Thus, such illustrations became an escape route, as well as a relatively popular gift in the form of a postcard to write to loved ones on the battlefield.

Sources

• A pictorial map of loveland