City of Champaign Interactive Map
Champaign Interactive Historic Map
The City maintains a map of historic aerials and Sanborn Fire Insurance Map mosaics providing information about buildings and the historic development of Champaign. Aerial Imagery is dated from 1936, 1940, 1948, 1955, 1958, 1967, 1969, 1973, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2008, 2011, and 2014.
Sanborn Maps were developed to assess fire insurance liability in urbanized areas. The maps contain detailed information about building construction, materials and land use. While they became obsolete after the insurance business began using other methods of risk calculation, they remain invaluable tools in learning about local history, urban development, and commerce. A legend for reading and a guide to interpreting Sanborn Maps are available here.
Other Historic Maps
1858 Alexander Bowman Map of Urbana and West Urbana (22.2 MB)
1869 Birdseye View (26.3 MB)
1884 Birdseye View (12.6 MB)
City Directories
City Directories provide a listing of names, addresses, professions of people in a particular town. They pre-date the development of phone books, and also provide numerous advertisements for local businesses. The most useful information contained in a city directory are connecting certain individuals to specific properties or businesses. The also include advertisements of local businesses, information on churches, fraternal organizations, and public officials.
These files can be very large is size and may take a few minutes to download.