Mapping past on present
How did a cemetery get onto my land? Why does that road bend so sharply? What is this schoolhouse doing in the middle of nowhere? City and county historians field such questions all the time. And lately, they’re getting help from Skidmore. Each semester, economics professor Bob Jones assigns local history projects as part of his course on geographic infor- mation systems, or GIS. Along with charting ethnic demographics and the political party of the incumbent in Con- gressional districts, incomes and unem- ployment rates in various regions, and other census data, his classes have traced land-use patterns over time, last year in Saratoga County and this year in nearby Washington County.
This year they started by unfurling and scanning maps from town archives —or in the case of a late-1700s map that was too fragile to handle, photographing it in sections and tiling the photos to- gether into one image. Then, in Skid- more’s GIS lab (workstations running ArcGIS software, plus scanners, plotters, and other gear), Jones and students geo- referenced the maps, matching geograph- ic coordinates in order to precisely resize
and superimpose maps from different eras. The resulting layers could show, for example, old roads, former businesses, new parklands, original land allotments, and current tax parcels. Viewed with GIS software, each map layer can be made as opaque or transparent as desired, and any segment of the map can be enlarged for a zoomed-in view. “Geography like this is putting histo- ry together,” Jones
WITH CREATIVE USE OF LAYERING,
“YOUR IMAGINATION IS THE ONLY LIMITATION TO WHAT YOU CAN DO WITH GIS.”
says. By adding environmental layers such as waterways, bedrock, and eleva- tion, he explains, “We could tell a com- plete story. We could see how a sawmill was built on a stream and the surround- ing village remained even after the mill closed, or how a school building was abandoned and removed as the popula- tion center shifted and new schools were built.” Marcella Jewell ’15, a double major in government and computer science, says, “This is a great course to take if you’re a visual learner.” She adds, “It’s been the most interdisciplinary class I’ve taken at Skidmore. It’s helpful for both my ma- jors, but all students could benefit from
learning to display their research in a vi- sual manner.” In fact, Jones says, the GIS course over the past few years has en- rolled students from 13 different majors, “whose mapping interests ranged from languages and dialects to Shakespeare play locations to historic stone walls.’ With creative use of layering—not to mention animations and virtual flyovers —“your imagination is the only limitation
to what you can do with GIS,” he says. “It’s really fun to teach.” And it’s really useful too. Ron Feulner, historian for the Town of Greenfield, says, “One of the most interesting mys- teries I have been able to solve involved sorting out the evolution of early high- ways, comparing maps to see how the roads changed.” He has to field ques- tions from residents wondering why their property includes a tiny remnant cemetery (which, by law, they must keep accessible for visits by the descendants of those buried there), requests from the planning board to check for historic arti- facts that may lie in the path of a devel- opment project, and more. Digitizing and uniformly scaling and siz- ing his archives’ original maps, Feulner says, means all this work can take less time and less space.
Lately Jones and Alex
GEOREFERENCED HISTORY: AN 1810 MAP SHOWS GIDEON PUTNAM’S “BOARDING HOUSE” (CENTER) AND “BATH HOUSE” (FAR RIGHT). A CITY MAP FROM 1876 SHOWS THE GRAND UNION HOTEL IN PLACE OF PUTNAM’S BOARDING HOUSE, AND HIS BATH HOUSE IS GONE. INA 2011 AERIAL PHOTO, THE HOTEL HAS BEEN REPLACED BY SHOPS, CONDOS, AND PARKING LOTS. THE GIS OVERLAY SHOWS 2011’S CARS AND BUILDINGS UNDER THE SEMITRANSPARENT 1810 MAP.
6 SCOPE SPRING 2014
Chaucer, Skidmore’s GIS in- structional tech, have been helping county historians re- search software and hosting options for displaying interac- tive maps on their Web sites. Meanwhile, Jones is photo- graphing historic sites, as well as videotaping historians’ nar- ration, so that map viewers will be able to click on a spot and get pop-up content. Since his popular GIS course fills up every semester, there’s no end of opportunities to keep en- riching local history. —SR
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