About the Project
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 identify 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 2003.
The first version of MGG launched in February 2020 with an initial dataset focused on the Southern United States from 1965 through 1980. Throughout 2020 we continued to add data and by August of that year we had a complete dataset for the United States from 1965 to 1980—-approximately 34,697 locations.
In 2021, with the support of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the MGG team began a multi-year effort to digitize, transcribe, and geolocate data from twenty-three additional years of Bob Damron's Address Books. Graduate research assistants at California State University, Fullerton and Clemson University transcribed each entry by hand, and the resulting data was cleaned, processed, and geocoded by digital history students at Clemson. In January 2026, we launched Mapping the Gay Guides 2.0—a completely redesigned site featuring 147,044 new locations extending coverage through 2003, a new amenities visualization, an updated searchable database, and comprehensive methodology documentation. Read more about the 2.0 launch in our announcement post.
Project Log
- January 2026: Launch of Mapping the Gay Guides 2.0. Release of 147,044 new locations covering 1981–2003. Redesigned website with new database, amenities visualization, amenity guide, and methodology page.
- October 7, 2022: Release of a new map that includes significant backend updates to accomodate large amounts of new data in the coming years. Release of data covering 1981-1985.
- April 14, 2021: Announcement of funding for the expansion of MGG.
- February 2, 2021: Release of data from U.S. territories between 1965 and 1980. This includes Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. Please note that the Bob Damron Address Books did not separate out entries in the US Virgin Islands from the British Virgin Islands. In an effort to maintain our commitment to replicating the source material as accurately as possible we have not done so either.
- August 10, 2020: Release of data from remaining states from 1965-1980. This release completes the entirety of the United States plus Washington, D.C. We've also made some changes to the map to ensure usability.
- May 15, 2020: Release of data from: Illinois, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.
- April 6, 2020: Release of data from: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kansas, Wyoming, Vermont, Utah, North Dakota & Alaska.
- March 30, 2020: Release of data from: California, Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Delaware, & New Hampshire.
- March 10, 2020: Release of Washington D.C. data.
- February 12, 2020: Site launch. The initial launch contains data from the Southern United States from 1965 through 1980.
- December 15, 2019: Added a "preview" vignette and visualization focusing on Alabama's LGBTQ spaces between 1965 and 1980.
Contact Us
The MGG team would love to hear from you. Feel free to send us comments, suggestions, or inquiries at info@mappingthegayguides.org or get in touch with us on twitter at @gayguides.
Cite Us
If you use this project, we would appreciate it if you would cite us using the suggested citation below:
Mapping the Gay Guides, Amanda Regan and Eric Gonzaba, (2019-): http:// www.mappingthegayguides.org.