Travel highway 51 along the Mississippi River in west Tennessee and you will pass through the tiny town of Halls, home to one of the largest collections of geographical rarities in America.

Halls is the kind of southern farm town where the community cotton gin dwarfs the two blocks that comprise the downtown. A village of just twenty five hundred, Halls is surrounded by seemingly endless fields of cotton. A parking lot two blocks from the center of town is filled, not with cars, but with empty cotton trailers sitting idle till harvest time.

Just down from Halls’ lone traffic light and across the street from the town Bank sits the old post office. The widows have been covered over and so at first glance, the single story, dark brick building appears to be empty. A small sign mounted beside the door provides the only clue to what you will find inside; Hudson’s Antiquarian Books, Maps, Prints and Globes.

Inside, owner/collector Murray Hudson presides over geographical chaos. Atlases, wall maps of every description and globes of all sizes are stacked floor to ceiling. A narrow ribbon of tiled floor snakes between the shelves and cases. Mr. Hudson started amassing this material as a college student in 1964. He spent a semester at Oxford University and fell in love with the map collection at a nearby antiquarian bookstore called Saunders on High.

"I went into the shop just before I was coming back to the States and saw the maps. Cause anyone who likes to travel likes maps and so I bought about fifty maps," Hudson recalls. "And one of these maps was half of a rare English map. I paid two pounds for it, which was by far the most expensive one. Less than ten years later I was offered the price of a round trip ticket to England for that one map."

Returning home and completing his degree, Mr. Hudson served for a time as a professor of English literature. He would later work as stockbroker, then returned home to west Tennessee to manage the family farm. Through it all he continued to collect maps and globes. Eventually the hobby became a more profitable enterprise than his career.

He notes, "Where there are two people with great wealth wanting the same item there is no telling what can happen, but I’ve had atlases go for twenty thousand. Certain maps of Texas are worth seventy five thousand."

And there may be more seventy-five thousand-dollar maps hiding on the shelves. Mr. Hudson isn’t really sure. His staff have been cataloging the collection for years, but the sheer volume of material, and the fact that pieces are constantly being bought and sold, frustrate their efforts.

"We are cataloging number – almost twenty five thousand as far as maps, which is not nearly what we have in piles and boxes. Probably have ten thousand more that are waiting to be cataloged, but it’s very time consuming. I’m not sure the number of books now, but let’s say three to five thousand," Hudson says.

In addition there are roughly 1100 globes in the collection. In fact there are so many that most are now stored in a barn on Mr. Hudson’s farm. The largest is a German globe measuring a meter in diameter. The smallest would fit easily in a pocket. One of the most unusual is a radio set built to look like a globe. You tune the radio by spinning the world from side to side.

Hudson describes some of the more notable globes he’s collected, saying, "The first globe done by an American, James Wilson, one of his thirteen inch globes from 1831 and I think that sold for sixteen thousand. The globe right next to you is an 1807 map on an original chip and dale stand from England."

Maps are Mr. Hudson’s specialty. He’s especially fond of maps detailing the United States expansion west. For example, one of his oldest maps shows Mexico in possession of most of North America. Another is one of the first wall maps of the United States printed in the United States.

"John Mellish was an Irish immigrant printer who came over and established a major printing house in Philadelphia at the turn of the nineteenth century. And he did the first wall sized map of the United States showing it from coast to coast," Mr Hudson explains. "And this is a later edition of it, one of the last editions he did before he died. It is extremely accurate as far as the rivers and streams throughout the country, because this uses Lewis and Clark – its one of the major Lewis and Clark related maps. And it was the latest, up to datest as of 1822."

Mr. Hudson was lucky to have started his collection at a time when few people were interested in maps and globes. He’s now profiting from a wave of new passion for all things geographical, interest driven by varied motives.

"By far the majority of my collectors are men and men are territorial. They want to see a map of their state, particularly Texans, and they particularly want to see a map of their state when it was a separate country. Now I have also noted, cause I have a Scotch/Irish background, that Scots in particular are – as small a portion as they are of society - they are a big portion of the collectors. Then there are more and more women collectors who are interested as much for aesthetics as much as they are the information. And a lot of the men are interested in it because some of these maps and some of the globes are just really, extraordinarily beautiful," Hudson says.

Global communications have greatly expanded the reach of Mr. Hudson’s business. He now has customers worldwide and collectors from Europe and Asia routinely show up in Halls, Tennessee to look over his offerings in person. However, most choose to simply browse by.

"I’d say at this point we get far more email than we get what people call snail mail," he says. "At least half our business now, the number of sales – not necessarily the big sales which go mostly to institutions – but over half our actual sales are on the website or email usually resulting from someone looking on the website."

After nearly 40 years collecting for himself and for others, Murray Hudson says he still enjoys his hobby turned occupation. "One of the real attractions, particularly early on and still is, is the hunt, looking for the treasure. And I had people constantly coming up to me at book and map shows saying, ‘You got any treasure maps?’ So I finally wrote an article, I’ve got it right over here, called ‘Treasure Maps’ and I end by saying the map itself is the treasure. So, that’s basically why I’m still hooked on them."

If you wish to begin a treasure hunt of your own you might want to visit Mercator’s World, the online magazine for map collecting, at mercatormag.com, or take a virtual tour of Hudson’s Antiquarian Books, Maps, Prints and Globes by browsing murrayhudson.com. A real map treasure in Hall’s Tennessee, just another stop along the American Highway.