Indiana Historical Society’s traveling exhibit, Indiana Through the Mapmaker’s Eye, will spend the month of October at the Seymour Museum Center.

The way maps can be viewed, both as documents and as mirrors of their times, are explored in the exhibit, according to a news release.

The museum and the exhibit will be open at times during Oktoberfest and the rest of the month in the center in the old federal building at Chestnut and Third streets. Hours will vary as hosts are available and as restoration projects allow in the former post office and city hall.

Groups, including school classes, may schedule tours by contacting the center through a message on its Facebook page or by calling President Lenny Hauersperger at 812-530-9272. Additional hours will be announced on the Facebook page.

The exhibit is drawn from the society’s collection of about 1,700 maps and atlases of Indiana and the Midwest dating from the 16th century to the present. It examines four ways people have used maps through the years: Documentation, tools, political images and art.

Some of the maps to be displayed include an 1833 tourist’s Indiana pocket map; a 1913 Sanborn Co. fire insurance map for Bloomington; Thomas Kitchin’s 1747 map of French settlements in North America; an 1881 bird’s-eye view of Mount Vernon; and a circa 1880 scale-model map of the University of Notre Dame.

Local maps on display will include an 1880s bird’s-eye view of Seymour and a variety of Sanborn fire insurance maps from 1886 to 1924 and the revisions that followed.

Local residents may message Seymour Museum Center if they have maps they would allow to be copied for display. Especially desirable are maps from the 1800s and the first half of the 20th century.

For information about the traveling exhibit program, visit indianahistory.org.