Linear lakes: These clever maps show an ‘unwrapped’ Lake Michigan and Lake Superior

A Matter of Perspective — Cartographer Daniel Huffman:

What happens if you take the shoreline of a lake, cut it, and unfurl it?

The once-closed shoreline of the lake now becomes linear, providing a new perspective on a familiar feature.

I made this map because I wanted to show space referenced against a natural feature, rather than figuring locations based on the cardinal directions of north/south/etc. I think it’s a very human perspective, grounded in how we relate to the lake, rather than how it looks from space. Rob Roth just wandered by while I was writing this and said that this depicted “configural knowledge,” so there’s your search term if you want to read the academic side of this sort of thing.

See also:

• A Matter of Perspective — Daniel Huffman detailed and entertaining blog post about creating these fascinating maps.
• Canyonlands National Park texture and shaded relief map — a gorgeous public domain map.
• Funny place names of Shetland and Orkney
• Map showing the distribution of the slave population of the southern states of the United States.Compiled from the census of 1860