Mapsco
Mapsco was started by Milton Boyd Keith, owner of several Dallas, Texas, florist shops.
Impetus for the first Dallas Mapsco began in 1948 when Keith's drivers kept getting lost, and he decided to make a street atlas booklet for them.
Keith spent four years appealing to local government entities to obtain current mapping, but was never successful.
Finally, in 1951, Keith approached the Dallas City Building Inspection Division, to obtain mapping data.
His shop manager, Lily Kendrick, was instrumental in the laborious process of paging and indexing the city of Dallas into a booklet.
The book was originally not intended for public sale, and was only to be used by Keith's large fleet of flower delivery drivers.
Unfortunately, the endeavor ended poorly when the glued backs disintegrated in the very humid air of that city, and Mapsco has not produced a Houston map since.
Keith's nephew did not perpetuate the Mapsco but instead took the map bases and formed his own company, called LO-KAT-IT.
Handymap and the Kendricks were able to acquire the Mapsco naming rights from the Keith family, and the nephew eventually got out of the map business.
In 1970, the company finally outgrew the flower shop and moved to dedicated headquarters at 1644 Irving Blvd in Dallas.
The next year, in 1971, Handymap released the first edition of the Fort Worth street guide - the second product in Mapsco's lineup.
The energy crisis of 1973 spurred Mapsco sales even further, when oil companies could no longer afford to give out free road maps.
On August 3 of that year Mapsco opened its first retail outlet at Preston Road and Forest Lane in North Dallas.
In 1986, Mapsco needed even more space and moved to a large facility at 5308 Maple Avenue, which also included a new retail store.
This was the first suburban Dallas book and was made specifically for traffic related to the cancelled Superconducting Super Collider project.
Street atlases of Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, and other regional products started to be published by Mapsco.
[12] The Mapsco Map & Travel Center located in North Dallas, Texas, closed on March 26, 2010.
[12] Mapsco Map & Travel Centers in San Antonio, Texas, and Denver, Colorado, closed at the end of March 2010.
