1906 Northern Pacific Railway 'Pointer' Dog Map of the Western United States

Charles Sumner Fee (September 24, 1853 - September 25, 1923) was an American railroad man active in the American Midwest and California during the latter part of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Fee was born in Laurel, Ohio. Fee began his railroad career in 1873 as general secretary to the manager of the Michigan Central Railway. In 1877 he took a position as H. E. Sargent's secretary at the Northern Pacific Railroad, which at the time had only about 400 miles of track. In 1883, he was promoted to Northern Pacific General Passenger Agent, a position he held until 1904, when he took over E. O. McCormic's position as passenger and traffic manager of the San Francisco office of the Southern Pacific Railroad. He was one of the directors of the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco. Fee died in San Francisco in 1923, at the time he was still working at the Southern Pacific Railroad. More by this mapmaker...

Poole Brothers (fl. c. 1880 - 1968) were a Chicago based firm active in the late 19th and early 20th century with an initial focus on promotional railroad maps. Poole Brothers was founded by George Amos Poole, one of the original four partners in the firm that would become Rand McNally, and his brother William H. Poole. Poole started his own firm, Poole Brothers, as a direct competitor to Rand McNally for the lucrative railroad business. Like many of its competitors, Poole Brothers maintained an office on Chicago's Printer's Row (downtown Loop district). Nevertheless, the two firms, along with Cram and Company, seem to have come to an accord, at least with regard to price-fixing, for which they were cited by the Federal Trade Commission in 1948. Their earliest known work is an 1880 map of Yellowstone National Park. Afterward they went on to produce a vast range of maps and other print products including tickets, cards, coupons, and restaurant menus. In time Poole Brothers merged with Newman-Randolph, which was then acquired by the American Can Company in the early 1960s. The American Can Company liquidated its printing concerns later in the same decade. Learn More...