Rebuild the Past by Georeferencing Historic Maps (in ArcGIS Pro or ArcGIS Online)
The ability to geo-locate or geo-reference historical maps has been a long-standing workflow in GIS. For those in history or planning programs, I love how this work can really make the past come to life. What buildings (or uses) existed in a location? How has an area changed? What physical landforms of the city have changed? Which landforms have persisted or shaped the current urban form? The best part, it doesn’t take 3 years of GIS to dive into.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting Boston University to give a workshop on georeferencing historical maps. As part of that workshop, I developed some basic StoryMaps, web maps, and materials to guide users through the process. The workshop used both ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro.
Rather than letting that material gather dust – I wanted to share it out in the hopes that others could benefit.
The main takeaways that I wanted the attendees to be aware of were:
- Basic georeferencing can now be accomplished in ArcGIS Online
- ArcGIS Pro is really easy to use for georeferencing if you need more precision and control
- Any of the maps or data that you georeference can be quickly and easily embedded into dozens of different applications
- There is a wealth of great primary source material available over the web (Library of Congress as just one example)
In this material, I also provided a download for the few maps that I use in the workshop. To be honest… I spent far too much time cleaning up and ‘cutting’ the water out of the 1867 Colton Map of Boston, so I’d love others to use it as well (that download can be found in the 2nd StoryMap).
These StoryMaps were both put together as part of the workshop, the first one provides some examples of what you can do with georeferenced maps. The other StoryMap provides a basic outline of the process and steps.
- Looking for Land: The growth of Boston: https://arcg.is/1miSP0
- Georeferencing, Digitizing, & Working with Time Series Data: https://arcg.is/19yuaj0
I’d love to see what others pull together or if anyone has some great lessons on georeferencing historical maps. Have you had students digitize features? Build time-series maps? Use them for field excursions? Let me know in the comments below!
