Late 1960s Champion Map of W. Lorain County

Yesterday I mentioned how for many years, the new Route 2 freeway ended at Baumhart Road. Here's a page from a Champion Map Atlas map showing that area and much of the northwest portion of Lorain County.

It's a lot of fun to get lost in these old maps. This one includes some of my favorite areas, including Route 6 west of the undercut.

Unfortunately, the map has no copyright date. However, you can still kind of get a rough idea of the time period in which it was printed.

It has a zip code listing in the back, so that puts it after 1963. The map also has the Penn Central Railroad tracks on it, so that puts it at least around 1968, since that is when the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroads merged. Strangely, it still includes Black River Township, which ceased to exist as of August 1964 after its remaining portion was annexed to Lorain.

Nevertheless it looks like a late 1960s map, even if some out-of-date elements were retained from earlier versions. (By the way, I had to scan the map in sections, so there's a bit of a seam in the middle of it.)

The map shows why Cooper-Foster Park Road jogs around the way it does today. Another interesting element of the map include the old bypassed stretch of Lake Road shown winding its way through the Beaver Park area. The old roadbed is still there today (most of it, anyway) but you can't drive it. (Several years ago, I tried to drive down into Beaver Park on the old Lake Road alignment, but a nearby resident – anticipating my intentions – quickly cut me off on foot.)