Item consists of one bound album measuring 55 x 37 cm. It contains four fire insurance plans for the former mining town of Hedley, BC, "situated on the Great Northern Railway, 250 m. east of Vancouver". Maps were surveyed by the British Columbia Fire Underwriters' Association in June 1937. Two paper labels adhered to the inside front cover include a "Key of signs" dated January 1940 and note "Plan no. 14" and that the plan was loaned to "Jack Dyck Agencies" in 1946. Sheet 1 provides brief fire protection details and two key (location) plans. It notes the Kelowna Exploration Co. Ltd. and depicts a variety of mining buildings, Hedley Creek, tramway lines, and topographical details. Sheets 2-4 provide larger-scale plans which include street names and depict mining and domestic buildings.
Fire Insurance plans and atlases are large-scale (high resolution) urban maps which grew out of the need of fire insurance underwriters to understand the physical characteristics of a structure to be insured. These maps show, with detailed colour drawings and symbols, the character of the construction of buildings, passages, probable fire cut-offs, fire walls, openings in walls, height and occupancy or use of individual buildings or groups of buildings. Street widths, street addresses, property lines, water pipes or mains, and fire hydrants are also typically located on the maps. Although fire insurance plans stopped being produced in the 1970s and have long outlived their primary function, they continue to act as important source material.
