Discover Fascinating Vintage Maps From National Geographic's Archives - 1

This map from October 1962 tracks a successful eight-month expedition to climb Makalu in the Himalayas, the fifth tallest peak on Earth, without the aid of supplementary oxygen. The explorers also made the first wintertime ascent of Ama Dablam on their way to Makalu.

This revealing depiction of Antarctica from the February 1963 issue was based on more than 5,000 depth measurements that scientists took by exploding charges and recording how long it took for the sound to travel through the ice, bounce off the bedrock below, and return to the surface.

This map of Britain from May 1964 locates where the action takes place in Shakespeare’s plays. The cartography is based on a map from a 1611 atlas, 'The Kingdome of Great Britaine and Ireland', by John Speed. On the National Geographic map, every word was hand-lettered by artist Lisa Biganzoli.

A cutaway of Europe’s Mont Blanc from September 1965 shows what, at the time, was the world’s longest highway tunnel. The 7.2-mile-long engineering marvel created an all-weather route between Paris and Rome and was expected to be used by half a million vehicles in its first year of operation. The illustration was painted by renowned cartographic panoramist Heinrich Berann.

In the 60s, Moscow prohibited aerial photography, so National Geographic had to find another way to create a bird’s-eye view of the grounds of the Kremlin to accompany a feature article about an American living in Moscow. Artists tracked down every diagram of the grounds they could find and supplemented them with ground-level photos to assemble the map. A National Geographic editor took the resulting sketch to Moscow to verify it on-site.

Based on the work of geologists Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, this gorgeous map of the Indian Ocean floor was painted for a supplement to the October 1967 issue by Austrian artist Heinrich Berann, who also painted many mountainscapes for 'National Geographic'. Berann worked with Tharp and Heezen to create three more ocean floor map supplements in the 60s and 70s.

This fold-out map from the April 1967 issue shows the plans laid out by a group of distinguished architects called the McMillan Commission to improve the heart of the capital city. 'National Geographic' identified existing structures, those under construction, sites of planned buildings, and proposed projects.

Made from 569 images taken by the Landsat satellite, this is the first colour composite photograph of the contiguous United States. It was published in the July 1976 issue to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial.

This beautiful view of Glacier National Park was painted by artist Christopher Klein for the June 1987 issue. Glacier was established in 1910, and in 1932 was joined with Canada’s Waterton Lakes National Park to create the world’s first international peace park.

Erosion has broken up vast sandstone plateaus in Venezuela to create isolated mesas known as tepuis. This May 1989 map by National Geographic illustrator Fernando Russo shows an area filled with tepuis, which are natural laboratories for studying how species adapt to extreme environments.