Harry Mathias Gousha (1892-1970) began his Chicago map publishing career as a Rand McNally and Company sales manager in 1918 but left the firm in 1926 to begin his own business. Best known for producing cheap automobile highway maps, the H.M. Gousha Company was immediately successful, securing contracts to produce millions of oil company road maps used as marketing tools freely distributed at gas stations by clients that included Gulf Oil, Conoco, Standard Oil, and dozens of others. Though most Gousha maps were produced for oil companies, many others were issued for clients not related to the petroleum industry, including automobile clubs, state governments, banks, and realtors.

Along with Rand McNally and the General Drafting Company, Gousha became one of the dominant Big Three U.S. road map publishers. By 1936, almost 20 years after hiring Harry Gousha for Rand McNally, banker Robert Raymond Erving (1893-1968) became H.M. Gousha Company’s majority stockholder, assuming control of the company during the economic Great Depression. In 1946 the firm moved to San Jose, California, was acquired in 1963 by the Times-Mirror Company of Los Angeles, established a production facility in Comfort, Texas in 1966, and prospered until the Arab oil embargo of 1973-1974, when oil company publishing contracts were greatly reduced. To offset the loss of most oil company business between the 1970s and 1990s, Gousha produced retail maps and travel guides solely under their own imprint, most notably the Chek-Chart series of road maps and related automotive publications. The company was bought in 1987 by Simon & Schuster and stopped publication completely after being acquired by Rand McNally in 1996, who donated this collection to the Newberry Library in 2002.