Unknown Coordinate System of 1900s USGS Topographic maps

[D__SamuelRajasekhar]

Hello All,

I have 1890s & 1900s vintage scanned Topographic Maps. The Coordinate system is obviously a Geographic Coordinate system since only the lat/longs are represented in the tics. the datum is Mean Sea Level. Perhaps they are in Polyconic Projection and Clarke 1888 ellipsoid. based on the corner Tic coordinates they were geo-referenced to Datum NAD27 because of convenience.

I am not an expert in geodesy, but how much shifts are expected for such transformations? Is such practice acceptable? There seems to be no sure answer. Any guidance/help is greatly appreciated.

-Samuel

[IanMurray]

Melita Kennedy​

[D__SamuelRajasekhar]

Melita Kennedy

Ian MurrayMelita Kennedy

I do not see any content. Am I missing some thing, please let me know.

Thanks

[IanMurray]

I was tagging her so this post appeared in her notifications and she would get to it sooner. She is probably the best person on here for dealing with coordinate systems and projections.

[IanMurray]

I may be worth seeing if you can find a GeoTIFF copy of your USGS Historic Topo here.  They have historic Topo maps back to 1880 or so.

Viewer | topoView

[MelitaKennedy]

They predate NAD27, so they're not on that GCS/datum. There was a New England datum, but there are no transformations from it to anything else that I'm aware of. The actual coordinate system of the map is unlikely to be geographic aka latitude/longitude, but they annotated it with a graticule and not with the grid (projected coordinate system) information.

You should probably try to georeference it with physical points like buildings or possibly street intersections, not the lat/lon tics.

[D__SamuelRajasekhar]

Layer Spatial Reference System

+proj=poly +lat_0=0 +lon_0=-103.25 +x_0=0 +y_0=0 +datum=NAD27 +units=m +no_defs

The above information derived from QGIS

I will be attaching the geoPDF

CO_Las Animas_402438_1893_125000_geo

The date is 1893

[D__SamuelRajasekhar]

CO_Las Animas_402439_1893_125000_geo.pdf

[D__SamuelRajasekhar]

Hello Melita Kennedy

I uploaded the geoPDF in:

https://community.esri.com/docs/DOC-7164

[IanMurray]

What exactly are you trying to accomplish?  I assumed you need to georeference an existing scanned topo and presented an alternative to download a pre-georeferenced one.  Melita also gave you an answer, but without being clearer about what you need, I don't think we can help further.