I've tried modifying loop but couldn't find a proper solution to make it work. Redirect maybe a bad practice but I haven't had any problems with it yet.

you would have to modify the loop in the index.php to pull the category that you want or make a new page template with the proper loop and set it to the static page

the redirect is very bad practice and I dont recommend doing so

The problem is that you can't set the category - only static page or post. When you are setting a static page you can't see the required information on the map, the same for the post. That is why sometimes you are required to set the category - to show the required map locations with some brief description page.

WordPress admin.. in Settings -> Reading you can set a static homepage

I dont recommend doing redirects like this

-Chris K

Recently I've tried to change the homepage to one of my directories but couldn't make it in wp-admin.
So here is the solution I found:
open your .htaccess file and add the following in the begining of it:
DirectoryIndex index.php?cat=43
where 43 is a number of your category(you can find it in your admin panel - categories page - just point a mouse to the category and it will give you an URL with ID= to the number of your category
Don't delete anything from your .htaccess file as it will break your WP.
At the end it should look like this:
# BEGIN WordPress
DirectoryIndex index.php?cat=43
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index2\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress