My job includes reviewing transportation projects for impacts to historic and cultural resources. Here in Connecticut our data is quite scattered, and I find it quite time consuming to do any kind of “complete” analysis. We have our highways, soils, topo. maps, and archaeological site locations in GIS. We have our archaeological site information in Access. To find properties or districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places I use the online database on the National Park Service website. To look at historic maps I use those that I have downloaded from the University of Connecticut or CT State Library websites and imported into GIS. I use the Bing birds-eye and Google street-view maps available online to “walk around” a project area if I don’t have a chance to get out and do some actual field review. Is there anyone out there who has streamlined this process? Or perhaps has other ideas about how to do this kind of initial review for Section 106/NEPA/Section 4(f)/etc? My job is also, in addition to making a recommendation to the SHPO, providing a series of maps that gives a view of the project area through time while also portraying its potential historic and/or archaeological sensitivity. I’m curious to know how other people may do this.
Jul 26
2 comments
lebrowning
August 7, 2012 at 2:41 am (UTC 0) Link to this comment
The VA SHPO has a system called DSS (Data Sharing System) that incorporates AP’s, USGS Quads, archaeological sites and structures. It also has NRHP districts and Civil War battlefield sites as layers in its GIS system. One other layer is probably going to be previous survey areas. The beast is being completely redesigned from the ground up and should be out next year. I really, really would like to see the GIS layering expanded to include resources that are from historic maps such as mills, railroads, iron furnaces and so on that as yet aren’t recorded in the system. It would be easy enough to correlate the source with a circle of relative accuracy. I don’t think there’s any plan to pull historic maps in but I did run across a nice map site that in essence does that at: oldmapsonline.org/ but it’s not extensive enough yet.
Lyle Browning
Mandy Ranslow
August 7, 2012 at 8:45 pm (UTC 0) Link to this comment
What a cool map site! I will certainly take a look at that while doing project reviews. Here in Connecticut we are fortunate that the Map and Geographic Information Center at the University of Connecticut has scanned a lot of our local historic maps (in addition to many others): magic.lib.uconn.edu. And what’s also great is that I can download them and bring them into ArcView. Unfortunately, there is the issue of georeferencing them, which we do not have the time to do at the moment. Even the 1811 Warren Map that has been georeferenced is far from perfect.
The VA SHPO DSS looks like something CT is working towards, though we’re far away from that. It looks like the data is easily accessible to qualified researchers. We’re hoping to unltimately digitize that kind of data up here. Where has the funding come for this? Is it striaght-up Department of Historic Resources and VA DOT or is it grants through those agencies? Unfortunately for us, it’s a lack of funding and staff that’s stymieing our efforts. And who makes the call on who gets access and who doesn’t?