Introduction
For my Digital Humanities midterm project, I wanted to explore how historical maps can be used to better understand the geography of the past. I have enjoyed georefernecing in this class, so I decided that it would be fun to do for the exam. I ended up choosing to georeference a historical map of United States military installations using Allmaps. My goal was to create an interactive map that allows viewers to examine the historical locations of military infrastructure in relation to modern geography.
Sources
The primary source for my project was a historical map titled War Department Installations: Fifth Service Command, available through Indiana University Libraries’ digital collections. The map depicts military installations across portions of the United States. Rather than using a traditional spreadsheet dataset, I worked with historical cartographic information. To prepare the map for digital presentation, I used geographic reference points to align the historical map with modern coordinates.
Processes
I used Allmaps to georeference the historical map. This involved identifying recognizable locations on the historical map and matching them with their corresponding locations on a modern basemap. By placing control points, I was able to align the historical map with modern geography. I found it especially useful to find points where rivers might branch off or where major highways meet by a city. I repeated this process across multiple sections of the map to create a more complete visualization. This process required some trial and error, particularly when trying to accurately align historical locations with their modern counterparts. Even with very careful alignment and about an hour and a half of work, the maps still did not align perfectly.
Presentation
I decided to present my project through an interactive map embedded directly into my WordPress website. I chose this approach because it allows visitors to explore the historical map themselves rather than simply viewing a static image. Using the Allmaps Viewer, users can zoom in, navigate across different locations, and examine how the historical map corresponds to modern geography. I also wanted to keep the website relatively simple so that the map would remain the main focus of the project. I chose to stick with the Twenty Fifteen theme so my subdomain would match the theme of my main blog.
Significance
This project demonstrates how digital tools can make historical sources more accessible and useful. By georeferencing a historical military map, viewers can better understand the geographic distribution of military installations and explore their relationship to present-day locations. This approach is particularly relevant to Digital Arts and Humanities because it combines historical research with geographic technology and interactive visualization. Rather than treating a historical map as a static document, georeferencing allows it to become a resource for spatial analysis. It also highlights how digital methods can help us ask new questions about historical geography and the ways locations have changed over time.