Our Top 11 Favorite Wood City Maps
A trip ends the moment you unpack. The tan fades, the stories get shorter, and the photos slide into a folder you never open. A wood map is our answer to that. It puts the coast you drove, the bay you sailed, and the harbor you watched the sun go down over back on your wall, carved to its true depth in birch. We make more than four hundred of them. Below are eleven that we keep coming back to, from the San Juan Islands to the Big Island, with a look first at how each one is built.
How a wood city map is made
Every chart starts with a place that means something to someone, say the Great Lakes. From there we pull the survey data: a bathymetric chart for the water, which is the nautical equivalent of a topographic map, plus the roads, shorelines, and landmarks on the land. Our artists translate that data into layers and cut each one from high-quality birch on a laser cutter. Stacked, those layers build the real shape of the seabed, so a deep channel sits low and a shoal rides high, exactly as it does on the water.
The water layers are then hand-stained in our signature blue-green, which is how your eye tells sea from land at a glance. The finished relief goes into a solid-wood frame, custom made to size, and it is ready to hang. The result reads as art from across the room and as a map when you step close, every road and cove where it belongs. That is the object behind all eleven maps below.
The eleven maps
1. Salish Sea, Washington
The Salish Sea is one of the richest marine regions in the country, the water that ties Puget Sound to the Strait of Georgia and threads the San Juan Islands. People come for the orcas, the bald eagles working the Skagit River delta, and the drive down Chuckanut, Washington's first scenic byway, which links Skagit County to Bellingham with the islands laid out below. The chart holds all of it, the maze of channels and the deep pockets between the islands, in a way a flat map cannot.
2. Puget Sound, Washington
Cross Deception Pass Bridge onto Whidbey Island and you are into the heart of the Sound: Tacoma, Everett, Port Townsend, and the ferry lanes that connect them. This is orca and dolphin water, and the layered blue-green really earns its keep here, showing how quickly the bottom drops away between the islands. Trace your own route across the Puget Sound chart and every stop has a place to stand.
3. Cape Cod, Massachusetts
Seventy-seven miles of dunes, sixteen lighthouses, and the whole hooked arm of the peninsula from the canal out to the tip at Provincetown. Cape Cod is a place people return to for a lifetime, and the Cape Cod chart carves every cove, harbor, and shoal to its true depth. Walk it, bike it, or sail it in summer, then hang the water you keep coming back to the rest of the year.
4. Chesapeake Bay
The largest estuary in the United States, and a bigger place than most visitors expect. Sailing is the obvious draw, but there is also history at Annapolis, camping on Hart-Miller Island, blue crabs by the bushel, and the cherry trees down in Washington, D.C. if you time the bloom. A few favorites for the region:
- Walk Baltimore's Inner Harbor
- Paddleboard the Nanticoke River
- Eat all-you-can-eat crabs at a dockside table
- Ride the Chesapeake Beach Railway Trail
- Catch a sunset over the bay from the Eastern Shore
The Chesapeake Bay chart takes in the whole watershed, from the northern rivers down toward the Virginia capes.
5. Narragansett and Newport, Rhode Island
This is the map for a beach vacation that never sits still: kayaking, fishing charters, and the Block Island Ferry all leave from here. Point out Point Judith Lighthouse and The Towers in Narragansett, then follow the water into Newport Harbor, where the depth of the anchorage shows in the birch layers themselves. The Narragansett and Newport chart is a favorite for anyone planning a Rhode Island getaway.
6. Lake Michigan
One lake, four states, and a shoreline that runs from the dunes on the eastern side to Chicago's skyline on the southern tip. You might kayak the coast, take a Chicago fireboat tour, tube the Platte River, or drive up to Green Bay for a game. See Cloud Gate, "the Bean," in Millennium Park, then find the exact roads you drove on the Lake Michigan chart. There is more to the lake than most people realize, and the map is a good excuse to keep learning it.
7. Ireland
You come home from the Emerald Isle with a faint brogue and a list of places you already want to see again. The Ireland chart holds the whole island, Kilkenny Castle, St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, and the run from Cork to Galway or Limerick to Waterford, with the Atlantic and the Irish Sea dyed our blue-green all the way around. Ireland is also the rare map we make three ways:
- Ireland cribbage board
- Ireland nautical wood chart
- Ireland wall clock
8. Hawaii, the Big Island
The bucket-list island, and big enough to hold rainforest, black sand, and an active volcano at once. Tour Rainbow Falls, wander the Hawaii Tropical Bioreserve and Garden, and stand at the edge of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Coming home is hard; hanging the Big Island chart makes it easier, whether you were snorkeling Kahaluu Bay or ziplining over Kolekole Falls.
9. Kennebunkport, Maine Coast
The quieter New England vacation, and still full of days. Wander Dock Square, walk Beach Avenue past Gooch's Beach, and take a picture from Goose Rocks, widely called the most scenic beach in town. Add the Seashore Trolley Museum and Goat Island Lighthouse and you have a week. The Kennebunkport chart keeps that stretch of coast, dune line and tidal river, in front of you.
10. New Hampshire Coast
New Hampshire has only eighteen miles of coastline, which makes it a quietly rewarding choice. The muse for a good deal of Robert Frost's work, it packs mountains, whale-watching tours, and river towns into a small run of shore. Spot downtown Dover, stop at Lickee's and Chewy's in the old Cocheco Mills, then head to New Castle for the Portsmouth Harbor Lighthouse and Peirce Island. A few names from the Granite State:
- Robert Frost, poet
- Alan Shepard, astronaut
- Franklin Pierce, president
- Mandy Moore, actor and singer
All of that coast is laser-etched into the New Hampshire Coast chart.
11. Lake Tahoe
Ski it in winter, swim it in summer. Tahoe is the second-deepest lake in the country, and that depth is the whole point of the map: the basin plunges fast off the shoreline, and the stacked birch shows it plainly. Take a boat across Emerald Bay, hike the Rubicon Trail, or spend a day at Sand Harbor, then find your path on the Lake Tahoe chart.
Find your water
Eleven maps, one idea: the places that shape a trip deserve better than a folder of photos. Pick the coast you drove or the lake you grew up on, and we will carve it to true depth in birch. Start with the full collection of wood charts, or go straight to the East Coast and West Coast maps and find your water.