Historical Maps website

[crollsurf]

I though some folk here might be interested in a website I've just published, called https://historicalmaps.online

It has a number of old maps of the Snowy Mountains which I've geo-referenced. The old maps sit on top of a current day map. You can zoom into points of interest, and by clicking on that POI, you can copy the Latitude and Longtitude into other mapping tools.

Also created a demo on how to use the site that will help getting started
https://youtu.be/BWHv2Ey1MbY

I'd love to add the Budawang Sketch Maps to the collection, but they are currently in copyright. If anyone knows the Elliott family and think they would be OK with me displaying the map, please PM me.

I hope to add more maps in the future, so open to suggestions, but they need to be of interest to bushwalkers and be out of copyright.

[peregrinator]

Excellent work, crollsurf. And I like seeing that old-fashioned spelling of the verb, shewing.

[JohnnoMcJohnno]

Wow! What a great idea. Love those old maps.

[madpom]

For those that are interested the NZ equivalent is at:

http://mapspast.org.nz

Hosting map series going back to the 1890s as well as a selection of one-off sheets.

Producing it was an exercise in 'eating an elephant'. They say to do so the important thing is to take one bite at a time - but a really important thing about eating elephants is not knowing how big the elephant is before you start!

Mapspast contains well over 1000 hours of work. Principally in georeferencing the older maps based on trig points they include. As many older trig references have been lost, this could be a multi-step process referencing to intermediate maps that contained both the old and new trig systems. The older map layers are not rectangular as yours are, but are limited by the survey district boundaries - often following ridgelines or meandering rivers. So to matrix a map series into a single layer the outline of each map had to be manually digitised to allow it to be cropped and the entire series to be matrixed into a single layer.

Some of the highlights of the NZ map series were discovering the unexpected locations they contained:

• The 'confiscation lines' delineating where tribes were expelled from their traditional lands for transgressions (perceived or actual) against the crown. Land seizure that would now result in international outcry and prosecution - delineated on a government map, bold as brass, as a mere bureaucratic process
• The 'Haunted Whare' (whare is the te reo Maori word for house / shack) on the slopes of Ruapehu.
• Quirky summit names such as the adjacent pairs Warra and Matta, or Oriwa and Notoriwa, or maybe the range of glacial hummocks 'Jumped Up Downs'

I hope the Australian equivalent goes well and gives you as much pleasure as producing and perusing mapspast gave me!

[crollsurf]

For those that are interested the NZ equivalent is at:

http://mapspast.org.nz

Hosting map series going back to the 1890s as well as a selection of one-off sheets.

Producing it was an exercise in 'eating an elephant'...

I hope the Australian equivalent goes well and gives you as much pleasure as producing and perusing mapspast gave me!

That's excellent madpom. Some beautiful maps and love the way you can see all the maps overlaid on a single map of NZ.

[crollsurf]

I've been playing around with map styling. Trying to find a more useful style for displaying contours and tracks etc. when it comes to hiking/bushwalking.
Any feedback would be appreciated
You can see links to the satellite and topo style in the appendix page https://historicalmaps.online/appendix/appendix.html

I've also added 3D versions of a lot of the existing maps. eg. https://historicalmaps.online/maps/3d/1945snow2.html but beware, they can take awhile to load

[snowygreybeard]

I don't know if you have control over it or not, but I find it of great benefit to have the value of the contours orientated so that if reading them 'normally' (right way up) then you are looking uphill. I've done this in my QGIS maps.
Also good to have the value straddle the contour it is referencing, rather than sitting above (or below) it.

[crollsurf]

I don't know if you have control over it or not, but I find it of great benefit to have the value of the contours orientated so that if reading them 'normally' (right way up) then you are looking uphill. I've done this in my QGIS maps.
Also good to have the value straddle the contour it is referencing, rather than sitting above (or below) it.

Thanks for the feedback snowygreybeard. Couldn't get the contour values to orientate, but I have been able to get the values to straddle the contour. I've made that change and I like it.

The approach I'm taking with this mapping style, is to provide useful information, as opposed to creating a style that is aesthetically pleasing. That's why I've made the tracks and creeks stand out more than normal. And why the contours stand out, even at the cost of making the map looking cluttered.

What I would like to do, is to display the tracks when further zoomed out than is currently available. It can be done, but it's requires effort and a level of knowledge that I'm not quite up to ATM.

Also an update on my mapping project.
- Maps are now 3D. They're the same as before but you can hold the Ctrl key to navigate in 3D which is kind of cool.
- Fixed bug when clicking on historical maps to get the correct coordinates.
- Changed the background map which shows more details like contours etc.