This is a listing of the NZMS 17, NZMS 271, and Infomap 271 map sheets published by the Department of Lands and Survey, and its successor, the Department of Survey and Land Information, from 1950 through to 1996. It does not include the Infomap 271 books that were also published by the Department.

The basic description of the series, as given in the Lands and Survey's Catalogue of Maps, reads as follows:

Over 200 cities and towns were mapped. The pre-metric editions are all in the NZMS 17 series. This became the NZMS 271 series when metrication was adopted, and from 1987 onwards the sheets appeared as "Streetfinders" carrying the series designation Infomap 271-xx.

In its publicity pamphlets DOSLI applied the term "Streetfinder" retrospectively to some maps, where the latest available edition had appeared before the Streetfinder term was first used. Examples are Ashburton and Hawera.

From 1990 onwards some street maps were available in spiral bound book form. The books also carried the "Streetfinder" designation, and continued the Infomap numbering system. The first book to be published covered Greater Wellington, followed by Canterbury and Westland in 1991 and Auckland and Northland in 1992. A number of towns and cities included in the books continued to have NZMS 271 sheet maps issued as well. The last of the NZMS 271 sheet maps appeared in 1996.

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HISTORY

The first sheet to be published was the Palmerston North map. In the absence of any specifications the map was modeled on a street map of Washington D.C. The map was drawn within the Cartographic Branch of the Department of Lands and Survey, and was followed by maps of Wellington, the Hutt Valley, and Christchurch. The Dunedin map was the first to be drawn outside of Wellington, and the printing was done by the Government Printer in Wellington in 1954. Once the problem of transporting drawings to and from Wellington for correction, and then printing, had been solved, the Department established a programme to draw street maps for all the major towns and cities within New Zealand, and the work involved was devolved to the district offices of the Department.

Initially the sheets featured one or two towns only, but the NZMS 271 series expanded the coverage to include a wide range of towns on most of the sheets, often drawn at a slightly smaller scale than the earlier NZMS 17 sheets. The Whangarei sheet, for example, appeared in 1955 as a "Map of Whangarei and environs", at a scale of 1:12,500, but the 1993 sheet had expanded the coverage to include not only Whangarei, but Dargaville, Kaitaia, Kaikohe and Kerikeri as well. The scale of the later maps was 1:20,000.

Most sheets went to many editions, Christchurch reaching 15 if a limited revision sheet is included. Occasionally a town would appear initially on its own sheet (examples are Dannevirke and Taumarunui) but later was incorporated into another sheet (in these examples, Hastings and Taupo & Tokoroa).

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This list would not have been possible without the assistance of fellow members of the New Zealand Map Society, and the help of a number of people is here acknowledged. In particular I would like to thank John Robson, University of Waikato Library, and Karen Craw, Hocken Library, University of Otago, who provided useful listings of their own holdings of NZMS 17 and 271 maps.

Brian Marshall
May 2004

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