Just after the end of World War II, Harlan and Anna Hubbard built a shantyboat -- a small, unpowered houseboat -- on the banks of the Ohio River, then spent six years floating down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers and exploring the bayou country west of New Orleans. Harlan Hubbard wrote two books about their trips, Shantyboat, A River Way of Life and Shantyboat on the Bayous, both published by the University Press of Kentucky. The books are revered for their description of river travel and as classics of the literature of simple living.

Both books are illustrated by a single map showing the entire span of the voyage. In the text, Hubbard makes clear his attention to the importance of specific places and the power of the land itself to shape the conduct of the people who inhabit it. To address Hubbards concern for the characteristics of specific places, and to help me understand the geography that is important to the narrative, I made two maps of the locations around Brent, Kentucky that were critical to the development of Harlan and Anna Hubbards shantyboat life.

The Hubbards began their married life in a home and studio, built by Harlan, in the town of Fort Thomas, Kentucky. But when they made the decision to build and live on a shantyboat, they chose a patch of Ohio River bottomland just outside Brent. They built a rough cabin, then, using lumber salvaged from a building in nearby Covington, spent about a year building their boat. They lived aboard the boat for another year, finishing preparations for their trip. Finally, just before Christmas in 1946, they cast off from Brent and began their trip downstream.

The map shows the locations where they salvaged the lumber, built the boat, and made camp on the first few days of their six-year trip. The descriptions of those places come directly from Harlan Hubbard's writing, and are used with the kind permission of the University Press of Kentucky. More information about the books is available from the University Press of Kentucky at http://kentuckypress.com/live/title_detail.php?titleid=1580

Two versions of the map are shown. The colorful version shows the Hubbard's travels superimposed on U.S. Geological Survey topographic maps that were made while the Hubbards were traveling. They show the cultural features -- the cities, towns, railroads, ferries, quarries -- that made the Ohio River a vibrant community in the middle of the twentieth century. The gray map shows only the terrain and the river, so emphasizes the natural rather than cultural landscape through which the Hubbards traveled.