Map of Oz Monday - Oz Club Map of Oz 1962

Oz Club's "Marvelous Land of Oz" map - 1962 version. Click to enlarge.

Today we'll begin looking in detail at the Oz Club's set of maps. We explored the origins of these maps last week, so let's jump right in! The club reissued and revised their Oz maps a number of times over the years. The first version (seen above) was published in 1962. There was a new set with many revisions and additions published in 1967 and additional editions published in 1971, 1975, and 1980, and a full overhaul of the maps was carried out in 2008. You can tell the issue date of the main "Map of the Marvelous Land of Oz" in a given set by the roman numeral date in the yellow shield on the Tin Woodman decoration. Alas, the 2008 revision inadvertently retained the 1980 date.

This 1962 version is also the first map to include locations and geographical features from all of the then-39 Oz titles, from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) through The Hidden Valley of Oz (1951), as well as locales from the Little Wizard Stories of Oz (1913) and The Laughing Dragon of Oz (1936). The 1962 version of the "Explanatory Notes" that accompanies these maps fails to mention anything about what books are covered in the maps. Many of Baum's non-Oz works are referenced in the "Map of Surrounding Countries," but we will save that conversation for a later blog post.

I greatly admire these maps and the care James E. Haff put into them. Haff was a civilian cartographer for the U. S. Air Force and a consummate Oz aficionado. And lest there be any doubt, the actual design of the maps is the work of Jim Haff. Dick Martin's role was to prepare a clean inked version of the line art, lettering, etc. and then to prepare the color separations, which were done by hand.

Below you can see Jim Haff's working drawing for this map. You'll probably want to click on the image so you can see the level of detail better.

James E. Haff's working copy of the 1962 "Land of Oz" map. Click to enlarge.

Thankfully, the first thing to point out is that Haff restored Baum's Munchkins in the east, Winkies in the west orientation for the first time since 1920.  But this map has for the first time in any Oz map, made both those countries and those directions agree with our "real world" compass. From the notes I've read, it doesn't seem like the creators of the Oz Club map ever even considered that Baum's 1914 map might have been "correct."  I can understand if they made a different choice, but it is surprising to me that the idea that directions were in fact reversed in Oz was not an option that seems to have occurred to them.

Jim Haff took great pride in spots where he could "sync up" details from different Oz books. A prime example being his charting of the Winkie River. Haff wrote in his unpublished notes: "This results incidentally, in a rather neat coincidence: Suds and its adjacent lake and are an extension of the Dangerous Passage and Soap Slide on the Winkie River."

Suds, of course, is from Ruth Plumly Thompson's The Gnome King of Oz (1927) and the Dangerous Passage and Soap Slide are from John R. Neill's Lucky Bucky in Oz (1942). It is little touches like this that make the maps so much fun!

There are many details unique to the 1962 version of this map; things that will be adjusted and corrected in the 1967 and later editions. To point out only a few: Reera is north of Skeezer Lake in this map and she will eventually be moved south of Skeezer Lake; Torpedo Town, Stairway, and the Delves are further north in the 1962 map and will be shifted further south in later maps. Note, too, that this map came out the year before Merry Go Round in Oz was published, so none of the locations from that book are on the 1962 version of the map.

While Dick Martin has for the most part drawn in each locale exactly where Haff placed it, there were a few omissions, such as Martin's failing to draw in "Bottle Hill." The label is present on the '62 map but the actual hill is not (see full-color map above). I will more systematically itemize the changes made to later versions of the maps as we get to those discussions.

Central section of Haff's master Map of Oz. Click to enlarge.

For the most part the published maps strictly adhere to Haff's master map. But the Munchkin Country was radically altered before the map went to press in 1962. This is largely due to a disagreement over exactly where Unc Nunkie and Ojo's cottage is located. Personally, I think Haff's original choice to keep Ojo and Doctor Pipt in the southern Munchkin Country was correct. Whoever urged their shift to the north created an unfortunate blemish. I was going to address this messy business in today's blog, but when I sat down with the various maps and copies of The Patchwork Girl of Oz and Ojo in Oz, I found the issue complex enough to warrant an entire post. Guess what you'll be reading next week?

There is another unique feature of the 1962 version of the maps. Dick Martin did not use a black plate in his color separation. He seems to have used a deep royal blue instead of black (see below); the three other colors being process yellow, magenta, and cyan. It's a handsome choice, IMHO. According to David Greene, Dick Martin personally oversaw the printing of the maps in Chicago.

Note that the text is printed in royal blue in the 1962 version of the map.

Despite my admiration and fondness for the Haff/Martin maps they have a major weakness (for me anyway) in that they generally disregard the shapes of the countries as presented in Baum's 1914 Map of Oz. The Gillikin Country is much enlarged, the area of the Emerald City is greatly shrunk, a good deal of real estate is taken away from the Quadling Country, and the proportion of Oz is altered, making it somewhat more square than Baum's fairyland.

I prepared a little animation to show the transformation from Baum's map to the Oz Club map. I had to mirror-image the Oz Club map to make the two maps "morph." I have aligned the top northern borders of both maps, as that edge was the least changed. I think you can see how radically Haff and Martin altered Ozian geography.

I suspect Haff adjusted that bit of the yellow Winkie Country to creep down to the southern edge of Oz so that the route of the sand boat would end in the Winkie Country as is described in The Road to Oz, but  there seems little reason for Haff to have altered the shapes of the other countries. Personally, I would have just redrawn the path of the sand boat into an arc, or shifted Dunkiton and Foxville, rather than alter the shapes Baum gave to his Oz countries.

I asked Jim Haff about some of this back in the late 1970's and he replied that he just wanted to equalize the land masses of each country a bit and that he always thought the area around the Emerald City seemed too large. There is also a possibility that Haff and Martin wanted to make the map "different" from the Reilly & Lee maps so as to avoid any hint of copyright infringement. But both Jim and Dick had died before I thought of asking them about that possible reason. In any case the altered country shapes make the map less authentic to me.

It would be hard to deny the influence the Oz Club's maps have had. They have been available from the club for over fifty years, they have been reproduced in various fantasy works, and they were included in all of the Del Rey reprints of the Oz books.

Next week we'll explore exactly what they did to the Munchkin Country and check out a few missed opportunities as well. Click here for the next blog in this series.

Original ad for the Oz Club Maps in THE BAUM BUGLE, Christmas 1963.

I must express my gratitude to Cindy Ragni of Wonderful Books of Oz.com for her help and generosity in sharing scans of Jim Haff's original "research" maps and many other helpful materials she has directed my way.