Fire Insurance Maps

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Fire insurance maps were used by the State Fire Marshal's office of the Texas Department of Insurance as part of its function to determine fire insurance rates for Texas cities and towns. In the late 1800s, due to large, catastrophic losses as a result of major fires, the insurance industry began to formally evaluate the fire defenses of communities. In 1916, an industry standard was produced, Standard Grading Schedule for Grading Cities and Towns.

Texas adopted an evaluation process in 1918, based on the 1916 standards, for establishing fire insurance rates for individual properties and communities. Items evaluated to determine the rates included the fire department's method for receiving and handling fire alarms, the capability of the fire department to fight fires, and the capability of the community's existing water supply to fight fires. The more proficient a community was judged in fighting fires, the lower the rate, resulting in lower fire insurance rates for the individual properties within that community.

The Sanborn Map Company operated between 1867 and 1970 creating large-scale plans of cities to assist insurance companies in assessing the risk of individual buildings and other properties. The Fire Marshal used Sanborn maps that were available and created its own fire insurance maps for smaller towns and communities that did not have Sanborn maps.

Three other types of map sheets are also found in the collection:

1. Sheets created by the Fire Marshal to supplement Sanborn maps for larger cities and towns;

2. Keys to sheets created by agency draftsmen who outlined and labeled areas covered by the agency-drawn fire insurance maps;

3. Street maps showing streets and water system features drawn by the Department of Insurance and its predecessors to accompany many of the agency-drawn fire insurance maps.

The fire insurance maps held by the State Archives cover east Texas, the Houston/southeast Texas area, the Corpus Christi/south Texas area, the southwest Texas area and central Texas. Maps are not present for all cities in these areas, but are available for many of them. Maps of the El Paso area are maintained at the University of Texas at El Paso Library Special Collections, a Regional Historical Resource Depository of the State Library and Archives Commission. Maps of the north Texas area are maintained at the University of Texas at Arlington Library Special Collections, another Regional Historical Resource Depository.

The maps at the State Archives are currently bound in volumes but will eventually be added to the Archives historic map collection. At this time the maps can be requested by volume numbers found in the index presented below. Within each volume, the maps are generally in alphabetical order.

The index lists the name of the city or location, the date or date range of the map, the type of map, the number of sheets for that location, the creator of the map (Sanborn Map Company, Texas Fire Insurance Department, or other predecessor agencies to the Department of Insurance, etc.), the volume number, and a notes field. The notes field gives the sheet numbers of maps created by the agency (A1-A10, B1-B6, etc.) and also notes if street maps that accompany the fire insurance maps contain a key to the agency-drawn maps.

Most Sanborn sheets fall within the date range of 1920s-1960s. The individual Sanborn maps in these volumes often cover a 20 to 30 year span of changes added from Sanborn updates. A few Sanborn maps also have hand-drawn additions made by Department draftsmen and supplement sheets the agency created to track new subdivisions and additions to the city since the date of the Sanborn sheets. Date range of the agency-drawn sheets of cities without Sanborn coverage is late-1920s-1970s, bulk being in the 1930s and 1940s. Agency-drawn supplement sheets for the Sanborn maps are mostly in the 1950s-1960s.

Please note that Sanborn and most street maps not drawn by a state agency are copyrighted. Reproductions of those maps cannot be made. The agency-drawn fire insurance maps and most of the agency-drawn street maps are in the public domain but are too large to photocopy. Arrangements can be made to have a scan made of these sheets at the requester's expense.

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Index

The Department of Insurance's index to the fire insurance maps was transferred to the State Archives along with the maps. The index was formatted for web presentation by Archives staff. The information content of the index has not been confirmed.

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