Perusing maps of Boston throughout the millennia is very much like enjoying a flip book. Over the years, the once skinny neck of the Shawmut Peninsula proliferated into the expanded cityscape we know and love today. One longtime Boston resident and noted history nerd, not unlike myself, took it upon himself to make a pet project out of charting Boston’s history fittingly starting with its conception in 1630.

According to WIRED, Ed McCarthy spent the bulk of his life in South Boston where he lived and worked as an EMT and ambulance driver. His secondary passion, though, is exploring the deep roots of the city he was shaped by. In 2007, he took it upon himself to create a map of the South End using photoshop and now, seven years later, he has 23 maps in his arsenal all representative of different eras of Boston yore.

WIRED notes further that he’s hoping to add another 25.

“McCarthy needed a map,” said WIRED. “More specifically, he needed to create a map.”

Apparently each of the maps, some of which can be viewed on his website which is still in the early stages of development. Each takes roughly six months to complete but the end result is an engaging and easily digestible history lesson of a perpetually evolving Boston that, while different from one period to the next, often retains many of the values it was founded on.

“There are a lot of obscure stories that are swiftly being forgotten, and I’m trying to shine new light on some of that old stuff, to make sure that it doesn’t get forgotten,” McCarthy told WIRED. “My goal is to create a document—meaning the whole collection of maps—that visually displays the development and the history of the city of Boston and all its neighborhoods in an engaging, entertaining way.”

Already McCarthy has sold over 130 maps for $100 apiece solely from word-of-mouth marketing. Once his website is up and running, though, he’ll surely be banking even more.