The primary focus of the Map Collection is the Monterey Bay Region. By agreement with other University of California campuses, UCSC has responsibility for collecting cartographic materials of five local counties: Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties.

The Map Room has over 160,000 items, including the region's largest and most comprehensive collection of aerial photographs of the five-county area. We have a local history collection that includes historical maps such as Andrew Jackson Hatch's 1889 map of Santa Cruz county, and slides of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps. Both the Hatch map and the pre-1927 Sanborn maps are now available in the Library's Digital Collections. The Map Room is a federal depository library and provides free public access to all materials received through the Federal Depository Library Program.

The collection also includes general world-wide topographic, geologic, nautical, and aeronautical coverage. Most of the collection is contemporary and includes atlases, sheet maps, maps in electronic format, GIS data sets, more than 400 wall maps for classroom use, and cartographic and geographic reference books and gazetteers.

Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps are detailed maps showing building footprints, construction materials, width of streets, house addresses, and the use of the building. The Map Room has Sanborn maps on colored glass slides for cities in Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, and San Mateo counties from various years. Our out-of-copyright slides have been digitized, and are part of the Library's Digital Collections.

See quick guides to maps in the collection of pre-1900 Santa Cruz: city maps and county maps showing landowners.

A photocopier and a scanner are available for making copies of contemporary material. In order to preserve our older material, we do not permit scanning or photocopying of original materials more than 50 years old.

Visit our Photographing Old Maps page for information on how to make copies of older and fragile material.

For a look at the Map Room, take our mini-tour.