Historic Map Works is a Supporting Vendor!

[4Nines]

TreasureNet.com would like to welcome Historic Map Works as our newest Supporting Vendor.

Please take a moment to visit their website and view old property maps of your area!

 

[HistoricMapWorks]

Thanks for the introduction 4Nines.

I'd like to invite all TreasurerNet members over to www.HistoricMapWorks.com/welcome/ when you have some time to spare.

I wrote "time to spare" because its rare for a first time visitor not to spend an hour or so on the site viewing old maps of their area. So many maps, so little time!

Though there are already more old property maps on www.HistoricMapWorks.com/welcome/ than anywhere else, we work really, really, hard to add as many new maps to the collection every week as possible. We are currently a long way to having everything we want to on the site, so if you don't see anything of interest for your area at the present, check back every now and then as we're constantly buying and scanning new maps and property atlases.

If any TN members are looking for something specific and you can't find it, you're email us directly at sales@historicmapworks.com for the fastest reply. In your email let us know you're a TreasureNet member and give us as much info about the area you are researching as you can: ie State, County, Town, township, Address, lat/long ect, years you are researching. If we have content for that area, we'll shoot you back some links. Likewise, if you have a question about a specific map on the site, just send us a link to the map in question.

We fund the company and our insatiable map buying /scanning habits with the money we make from our users' purchases (prints, downloads, monthly / yearly memberships ect). By charging for these functions the past 6 years, we've been able to ensure that viewing both the maps and overlays we've created for them have remained completely free and available to the public.

Stop by when you get the chance and if you know of anyone who has an interest in old property maps, let them know about Historic Map Works.


Good hunting!
Jason
www.HistoricMapWorks.com/welcome/

 

[rossman85]

You guys are right about spending a lot of time on your sight! Great website for looking for old areas to metal detect.... This site is definitely helping my endeavor as I am new to the hobby!

 

[The Rebel]

Your site is the best! I purchased the 1 year membership earlier this year.

Will you offer any discounts/special offers for TN members? I'm a huge history buff & I have had to use Google earth along with maps I've found online & had to manually overlay them. How do you do it?

Thanks for all that you guys do to help us get to these special places!

 

[HistoricMapWorks]

Hi Rebel,

Glad you find the maps useful. We are thinking about redesigning and streamlining the way our users purchase downloads and prints of our scans. Assuming we implement the new system, it should be a simple matter to give TN members some 'members only' offers or access to more advanced features ect. Until then, we announce most of our promotions in the daily feed on the HistoricMapWorks Facebook page.

As to your second question about how we create the overlays from our old maps, I hope the following is useful:

The overlays you see in our Historic Earth viewer are created by our employees using a software system we've built in house and is fully integrated with our scanning and website systems. Unlike scans of aerial photography / satellite imagery which can displayed as overlays automatically without any additional investment, the scans of our old maps require quite a bit of work on our end before they can be turned into overlays. While many of our overlays were created using a pattern recognition program we wrote, the majority of overlays were created manually, one at a time by our GIS technicians.

The process goes like this...

It starts when one of our GIS techicians are assigned a particular batch of old map scans in which to turn into overlays. Often this a batch is all the maps within a single county land atlas, a plat book or perhaps a particular group of wall maps ect. The technician then pulls those old maps into our GISing program which displays the maps one at a time on the screen side by side with a modern map baselayer. The tech then finds and marks appropriate points on the old map and then finds and marks those same points on the modern map. Usually 5 to 6 common points are good enough to create overlays for block level detail maps, however large county wall maps tend to need dozens. When enough points are found, the tech visually reviews the overlay and if he's happy with the results, the data is saved and the tech moves onto the next map. Because we use a GIS program which is integrated into our website, the map is instantly viewable as an overlay within the Historic Earth map viewer by our users.

The process from start to finish takes anywhere for 5 to 40 minutes per map with the average somewhere in the 20 to 30 minute range. To date, we have created over 300k overlays using a combination of the manual technique I described above and the automatic pattern recognition technique referenced earlier. As you can imagine paying the techs to create all those overlays that you currently are able to view and use on the site has not be an insignificant investment for us.

It is our intention to create an overlay for every map on our site and we are approximately half way there. The speed at which we do so is only throttled by the number of people we can afford to employ on the project. At the current rate we expect to be creating overlays for many years to come, so if you find your favorite maps aren't available as overlays in Historic Earth, you'll want to check back from time to time to see if we've made progress in your area of interest.