From Mapping the Gay Guides: "Mapping the Gay Guides aims to understand often ignored queer geographies using the Damron Address Books, an early but longstanding travel guide aimed at gay men since the early 1960s. Similar in function to the green books used by African Americans during the Jim Crow era to help identify businesses that catered to black clients in the South, the Damron Guides aided a generation of queer people to identity sites of community, pleasure, and politics. By associating geographical coordinates with each location mentioned within the Damron Guides, MGG provides an interface for visualizing the growth of queer spaces between 1965 and 1980.

MGG launched in February 2020 with an initial dataset focused on the Southern United States from 1965 through 1980. We’ve also received a Research Scholarship and Creative Activities grant from California State University, Fullerton to continue to digitize data and will continue to release more data throughout 2020."