I am a dork

I love old maps, really old, especially of America, especially ones that show either the seeds of things to come (like the names of territories that became states) or things that were the cartographer's best guess of how the map would look if they had bothered to actually explore it (like maps where Baja california extends all the way up to modern day Oregon and splits the entire state of CA off into an island).  For that reason, I really love The Old Map Gallery in Denver.  They have tons & tons of maps from pretty much the 1400s on, broken out by country, state & city.  I bought an excellent map of 1936s Los Angeles that was put out by city boosters during the first LA Olympics trying to promote the fledgling city (it's amazing how little LA there was pre-WWII) to the rest of the world.

In general, I'm always fascinated by the Los Angeles of the first half of the 20th century.  From the carving out of the Venice canals to the thieving/importing of water to turn this desert into a metropolis, to the creation of an entire industry that has come to define the town, only Las Vegas has done more in less time to impact the view of America outside our borders.