An archive of paper ephemera
Things that were printed,
held, and saved.
Maps you can zoom into until the paper grain shows. Advertisements from when they were art-directed by hand. Matchbooks from establishments that mostly aren’t there anymore. Scanned, researched, and shared.
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- Maps
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- Advertisements
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- Matchbooks
Why this exists
The most undervalued part of the historical record.
A 1938 map of Spokane’s water mains tells you more about how the city actually worked than most photographs of it. A matchbook from a Tacoma supper club tells you which streets had which crowd. A program from a Renton racetrack preserves an evening’s line-up of horses, jockeys, odds, and one bettor’s pencil mark in the margin.
This is the kind of paper that ends up in a desk drawer, a glove compartment, an inherited box — small, dated, specific. It crumbles if no one bothers with it. So I scan it, research what I can, and put it online.
I’m Spencer Davis. I live in Seattle and build software for a living. This site is the public face of a personal collection — most of the items here come from the Pacific Northwest. Descriptions are written with the help of Claude (vision plus web search, grounded in archive.org, HistoryLink, Wikipedia, and university digital collections); pin annotations on each scan flag specific details worth a closer look. Verify before citing.
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Other things I build
Software, mostly. Then ephemera.
When I’m not scanning paper, I write code — production systems, AI integrations, Chrome extensions, iOS apps. The archive is what happens when a developer who lives in Seattle starts caring too much about a 1962 fold-out city map.