Website: Historic Map Works, LLC

Based in Portland Maine, Historic Map Works, LLC is an Internet company formed to create a historic digital map database of North America and the world. Drawing on the largest physical collection of American property atlases of its type, it is our aim to be the single best online destination for map enthusiasts and researchers alike.

In addition to our own atlas collection, we incorporated our scans of the antiquarian world map collection from the Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education located at the University of Southern Maine. Combining these collections allows site visitors a vast amount of information spanning several centuries of cartographic information.

Historic Map Works's map collection includes:

• United States Property Atlases
• Antiquarian Maps
• Nautical Charts
• Birdseye Views
• Special Collections (Celestial Maps, Portraits, and other historical images)
• Directories and other text documents

The vast majority of our database was created by scanning an original map at a high resolution by our team of highly skilled image technicians. After scanning, this team processes out the major imperfections while maintaining the look of an antiquarian map.

Click here for a video demonstration.
Maps are then uploaded and cataloged for viewing on our website. Our technicians geocode each map to a modern map to enable the search by address function. Linking the historic images in our database with geocode data allows visitors to search by modern day address or latitude and longitude coordinates. Other methods to view our maps include browsing by geographic location as well as searching our maps via keywords, town names, makers names, or simply by year.

Prints and giftware are offered for the vast majority of images on our site. A Giclee printing process is used to create the images ordered from our site ensuring an archival print that will remain vibrant for years to come.

Historic Map Works has two websites which host our maps. The first is www.historicmapworks.com which is aimed at individual subscribers and the second is Historic Map Works Library Edition which is distributed by ProQuest to public libraries and universities.

Our map collection numbers over 1,595,425 individual images (click here for detailed statistics of maps available online) for you to explore. Track your ancestors to their homes; see the roads they traveled on, and the names of the neighbors they talked with. Multiple layers allow you to see an area change through time, and our Geocode feature allows you to compare historical and modern maps.

Website: Old Maps

Reproductions of historic town maps, state maps, birds eye views, and more. www.old-maps.com    (with a dash)

Old Maps  is the name of a small business that was established in 1980 to republish historical maps. We started with printed volumes of Cheshire County, NH, but our focus has since expanded to offering digital and printed reproductions of maps from all over New England.

We do our best to provide free content, such as compressed maps that are more easily downloaded by people with dialup internet. If you find any of the maps useful, please support us by buying a print or CD!

 

Manicouagan Crater

Manicouagan Crater is one of the oldest impact craters on earth, and is situated in the Cote-Nord region in Quebec, Canada. It is estimated to have been created over 215 million years ago, by a 5km (3.1mi) diameter asteroid. The crater is a 100km (60mi) diameter, multi ringed structure, with the most prominent feature being a circular lake, about 70km (43.4mi) in diameter. This crater also forms the largest in an array of craters believed to be a multiple impact event.

Dragon Blood Tree

The Socotra Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of Somalia, is home to the Dragon Blood tree. The Dragon Blood tree is unusual for a number of reasons. Its trunk is bare and branches only at the top, ending in sharp spiky leaves. This unusual appearance is due to the Dragon Blood tree belonging to the monocotyledons, the same group of plants as grasses, rather than dicotyledons, which are more common amongst trees. As well as an unusual exterior, the trees also reveal an unusual interior; once pierced bright red sap oozes out. The crimson sap, called Dragon Blood, is dried and then used as a medicine or a dye. While the inhabitants of Socotra still use it as a panacea, the sap is mostly used in the West as a red varnish for violins.

Hyperion California

Hyperion is a Coast Redwood, and has the distinction of being the tallest living organism ever measured. It is 379.3 feet tall. That’s 38 stories, 100 feet taller than #5, 50 feet taller than the tallest habitable building in Washington, D. C. It grows in Redwood National Park and was not even discovered until 25 August, 2006, because all the trees around it are also redwoods, and are all gargantuan.

Like all redwoods and sequoias (very similar species), Hyperion is so enormous that it possesses its own ecosystem, with full-size pines and hemlocks growing on its branches. It is so high that if you could avoid the branches (and other trees) on the way down, BASE jumping would be no problem at all. There are no confirmed photos of it on the Internet, because scientists don’t want it disturbed or damaged by tourists. Like the Giant Sequoia, you can fit about 10 coast redwood seeds on the face of a dime.

Maelstroms

Maelstroms, hugely powerful whirlpools, have a long history in fiction as being terrible dangers to sailors. In real life there have never been any cases of large ships being sunk by maelstroms. The swirling masses of water in maelstroms, usually driven by unusually strong tides, are impressive. The Corryvreckan on the west coast of Scotland can be heard miles away as huge waves up to fifteen feet high crash back into the sea. Huge whirlpools have always attracted adventurous souls and the Corryvreckan was first swum by George Orwell’s one-legged brother-in-law. Maelstroms can be found world wide and chartering boats to them has become a popular tourist activity.

Aurora

In my opinion there is no greater natural spectacle than the Aurorae. I first saw them while standing on a frozen lake in the north of Finland. We had left our little fire hut on the shore because a very faint green glow could be seen over the treetops. As we watched, a wall of green swept silently across the sky, flecked with pink lines. When you see a picture of the aurorae you do not get the sense of motion or scale. The aurorae occur when particles, ejected on the solar wind, are channeled by the Earth’s electromagnetic field into the atmosphere. As the particles strike the atmosphere they ionize atoms which then release light. Some people report hearing a crackling sound when aurorae are particularly intense, but this has never been confirmed.