Historical Sources

See also: OpenHistoricalMap/Resources

This page is intended to discuss and review various sources of historic mapping information.

Historic Geographical Information

Britain

• Out of date Ordnance Survey maps. Some of these are already available to trace on JOSM/Potlatch etc, however their use for detail is limited. However there does exist many smaller scale (eg 1:500) OS maps that from the 19th Century. At the moment I have not been able to completely verify copyright issues surrounding them, at least not to the extent whereby I would be comfortable using them for OSM, however it does appear they should now be out of copyright. This would make sense as there are far more recent out of copyright OS maps available. The second issue, providing the first is resolved, is getting a hold of them. They can be found on the internet in small amounts, but I would strongly suspect there would be legal issues relating to getting them from these sources.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

[1]

Historic Political Information

This is largely the purview of historic maps.

Historic Business Information

United States

Note that sources over 97 years old are out of copyright

• Pastmapper.com tutorial: http://blog.pastmapper.com/2011/12/process-part-1/.
• Real Estate Maps
• Insurance Maps: Sanborn (Library subscriber link, open Library of Congress link,
  • see tutorial for Sanborn georeferencing using QGIS and JOSM
• Business Directories

Historic Battle & Campaign Information

Campaigns and their associated Battles may range over large geographic areas. There may or may not be traces on the ground.

Topographic information and vegetation at the time of the event are things that are worth mapping when accurate information is available.

United States

• Official Maps
  • Cope Maps, Battle of Antietam (1908 edition)
• Official Records
• Other Primary Sources
• Secondary Sources

Historic Geographic Information

Over time, humans have dramatically shaped the surface of the earth. This is particularly true for shorelines and urban areas.

Cadastral surveys throughout history are some of the more well-known sources of historic geographic information.

DavidRumsey.com has a large collection of historical maps available for download or as a web service together with a web-enabled Georeferencer

Canada

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_Land_Survey

United States

The Bureau of Land Management keeps historic maps from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Lands_Survey_System

The US Geological Survey shares historical topographic maps on the TopoView page https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/