(no subject)
Jul. 12th, 2014 04:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariFor those interested in my Old Roads Fascination, here's a project I worked on for a while - an "Ancient Atlas" of Texas roads before TXDOT was formed. The South Texas stuff isn't very accurate. the North Texas stuff is more accurate, but still rather faulty.
I poked the El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Association when when I found an even more accurate way of plotting the roads (and they seemed very interested)...but it's SUPER time and labor intensive. I managed to do one run of the Laredo road through McMullen county, then gave it to the Camino Real folks, who promptly ignored it (I'm guessing the one person who was interested was no longer there when I finished).
Basically, going through old property maps from between 1850-1915, I'd look for roads marked out. Then I'd plot them in Google Earth.
Most of south Texas was done by eyeballing the roads over an overlay of the General Land Survey, property line by proprty line. the Northern Stuff was done by actually copying the map onto Google Earth, with the over lay, and force-fitting it at the county level. More accurate then just eyeballing, but still not perfect. The most accurate one was actually doing the same thing as force-fitting the county map, but this time on a property-by-property level. It was the most accurate, but at the same time, the most time consuming. I think it took me several weeks to plot one road through one county.
Since it also isn't going anywhere, here it is for your enjoyment. Turn on the Terrain Mode in Google Maps. Those roads become VERY interesting.
http://goo.gl/maps/gVxrN
(attn Richard Zelade, Stephanie Martinez, Tess Flynn, and Liz Courts (well, her mom)) :)
I poked the El Camino Real de los Tejas National Historic Trail Association when when I found an even more accurate way of plotting the roads (and they seemed very interested)...but it's SUPER time and labor intensive. I managed to do one run of the Laredo road through McMullen county, then gave it to the Camino Real folks, who promptly ignored it (I'm guessing the one person who was interested was no longer there when I finished).
Basically, going through old property maps from between 1850-1915, I'd look for roads marked out. Then I'd plot them in Google Earth.
Most of south Texas was done by eyeballing the roads over an overlay of the General Land Survey, property line by proprty line. the Northern Stuff was done by actually copying the map onto Google Earth, with the over lay, and force-fitting it at the county level. More accurate then just eyeballing, but still not perfect. The most accurate one was actually doing the same thing as force-fitting the county map, but this time on a property-by-property level. It was the most accurate, but at the same time, the most time consuming. I think it took me several weeks to plot one road through one county.
Since it also isn't going anywhere, here it is for your enjoyment. Turn on the Terrain Mode in Google Maps. Those roads become VERY interesting.
http://goo.gl/maps/gVxrN
(attn Richard Zelade, Stephanie Martinez, Tess Flynn, and Liz Courts (well, her mom)) :)
