DAPHNE, Alabama (GCN)— With watercolor pastels and 3D graphics, a new guide to downtown Daphne paints a unique portrait of the city’s history.

The Olde Towne Daphne Association, a nonprofit membership organization, has been working for the past two years to create a guide to Olde Towne Daphne to promote the area. The map, which is now available to the public, was born from history walks the group organized, Olde Towne Daphne Association Member and former City Councilwoman and Cathy Barnette said.

“We were talking about doing historic walks through downtown Daphne and we thought, you can’t have a walk without a map,” Barnette said in an interview with The Courier on Saturday. “We wanted to focus on Olde Towne and work to create that identity for Olde Towne, where folks would start to realize the jewels in their own backyard.

“Al Guarisco had been asking for a history piece and we were interested in putting out an inclusive guide to the historic locations,” she said “Then we thought, ‘How can we promote and get people to shop at our local merchants as well?’ That’s how the business guide can about.”

The guide has a foldout map that pinpoints 52 historical areas ranging from old cemeteries to the sites of former hotels from the early to mid-1800s. A separate guide lists all of the merchants, over 80 total, in the Olde Towne Daphne area.

The Olde Towne guide project was partially funded through a grant from the Downtown Redevelopment Authority, totaling about $3,000.

Ted Burn, a Daphne artist, drew the map for the organization and Guarisco helped to highlight what historical areas needed to be included and provided research and descriptions of those areas, Olde Towne Daphne Association President Karen Nady told The Courier on Saturday.

So far, 10,000 copies of the historical map and 5,000 copies of the business guide have been printed. The Olde Towne Daphne Association gave the business guide to the Downtown Redevelopment Authority, which plans to print another 5,000 copies of the business guide. One issue the authority will have to work out is a printing schedule for those guides, because the current one is already out of date. Businesses change daily in the area, said Barnette, so updates will have to be scheduled. At the Downtown Redevelopment Authority meeting last Wednesday, they agreed to update the map on an as needed basis as much as they could.

So far, the response from the public has been great, Nady said. The guides are available now at City Hall, the Daphne Library, the Fairhope and Spanish Fort Chamber of Commerce locations, at many Olde Towne Daphne businesses, and will soon be available at many more places.

“We are working on increasing our distribution throughout Baldwin County and even further into Mobile and Pensacola,” Nady said. “We believe that this will help draw people into the heart of Daphne and help our local businesses.”

The group will also have a poster of the map available at The Frame Corner in Olde Towne for a donation to the organization. The poster and price will be available in the next few weeks, Nady said.

Anyone can visit the Olde Towne Daphne Association website, www.oldetownedaphne.org, to download a copy of the map as well. The association is funded by member support and donations and as long as you have an interest in downtown Daphne, you are welcome as a member, said Barnette.

“We want to instill a sense of community for Daphne and bring people together through this unique area that we have.”