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Mount Vernon Regional GIS Symposium for Historical Resources, Winter 2015

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Watch livestream

Schedule

09:00-9:30 Arrival / Coffee & Pastries
09:30-10:00 Opening remarks – Introductions
10:00- 10:30 Georeferencing Historical Cartography for Analyses of Indian-White Relations
Daniel Cole, Smithsonian Institution
10:30-11:00 Windshield Scenery of the Potomac River Gorge: A Visual Resources Inventory and Assessment of the Northern George Washington Memorial Parkway
Daniel Schaible, National Park Service
11:00-11:15 Break
11:15-11:45 Using Story Maps as a Communication Tool
Allen Carroll, ESRI
11:45-01:00 Lunch/Networking
A boxed lunch will be provided free of charge
01:00-01:30 Documenting and Sharing Monticello’s Landscape History
Claire Casstevens, Monticello
01:30-02:00 Visualizing Early BaltimoreDan Bailey, University of Maryland Baltimore City Imaging Research Center
02:00-02:15 Break
02:15-02:45 Toward an Archaeology of Baseball: Using GIS to think about big grassy fields in Alexandria, Virginia
Rebecca Siegal & Benjamin Skolnik, Alexandria Archaeology, City of Alexandria, VA
02:45-03:00 Closing remarks/adjournment
03:00-05:00 Optional tour to the historic area. Feel free to continue visiting the mansion and grounds until closing at 5:00.


Georeferencing Historical Cartography for Analyses of Indian-White Relations

Daniel Cole, Smithsonian Institution

This is an historical cartographic analysis of Indian-EuroAmerican relations in the United States. We will explore threefold the roles of government, academic, and tribal mapping, and bring them together with some findings concerning Native American land tenure, population and related activities. As can be seen, government and academia have shared cartographic data; both have learned from the tribes, and in turn, the tribes have learned, not always to their well-being, from the others. All of these issues are involved in the affairs of Indians in our country and will be discussed to analyze the ongoing spatial activities across the dynamic landscape of native America.

Windshield Scenery of the Potomac River Gorge: A Visual Resources Inventory and Assessment of the Northern George Washington Memorial Parkway

Daniel Schaible, National Park Service

Baked into the enabling legislation of the George Washington Memorial Parkway is a mandate to "preserve the natural scenery of the Gorge and the Great Falls of the Potomac". Utilizing GPS spatial analysis tools, this project compares historic and contemporary vegetation management practices and scenic conditions along the northern parkway. In addition, this presentation will discuss the Visual Resource Assessment process, a new approach to visual resource management within the National Park Service.

Using Story Maps as a Communication Tool

Allen Carroll, ESRI

Esri Story Maps let you combine authoritative maps with narrative text, images, and multimedia content. They make it easy to harness the power of maps and geography to tell your story. See examples related to historic preservation and learn how make your very own Story Maps.

Documenting and Sharing Monticello’s Landscape History

Claire Casstevens, Monticello

Thomas Jefferson deeply appreciated the natural world as a multifaceted place of utility, ornament and personal fascination, and the grounds of his mountaintop home of Monticello remain a testament to this even today. Contemporary visitors to the historic site can admire both the fine resolution of annuals and perennials displayed in Jefferson’s flower and vegetable gardens, as well as the broader strokes of allees, orchards, groves and edited woodlands that at one time boasted over 160 species of trees.

This presentation will detail the initial stages of Documenting and Sharing Monticello’s Landscape History project, a three-year endeavor funded by the Americana Foundation that will help to champion the landscape as integral to the experience of this historic site. The purpose of the project is to compile a robust documentation of Monticello’s living collection that unites preexisting horticultural records and historical research with newly collected spatial information. The long-term goal is to make these records public and interactive, and to build greater awareness of the critical role that plants have played in Monticello’s historical narrative. The presentation will describe the workflow involved in the project, which integrates TerraSync, Pathfinder, ArcGIS and IrisBG, a new collections management system catering to botanical gardens. In particular, it will highlight the use of ArcMap as a viewfinder for data stored in IrisBG, as well as an interpretation tool that will aid in the construction of own Garden Explorer module (http://www.gardenexplorer.org/)

Visualizing Early Baltimore

Dan Bailey, University of Maryland Baltimore City Imaging Resource Center

September 13, 2014, marks the 200th anniversary of the major British attack on Baltimore. What was so important about Baltimore two hundred years ago? Over a few decades in the early nineteenth century, Baltimore's population exploded, and it grew from a small town to the third largest city in the young United States. What was the draw? After the British set fire to the city of Washington in 1814, they set their sights on Baltimore, which they considered a particular thorn in their side. Why?

The IRC has spent two years researching how Baltimore would have looked circa 1815. Working with UMBC's Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE), the IRC created an accurate topography on which to build the city. It consulted local historical scholars and scoured documents relating to specific buildings to determine which structures existed back then and how they would have appeared. With that information, a team of IRC artists modeled and textured the buildings, wharves, and other structures that defined Baltimore during the economic and population boom that accompanied the height of the harbor's role in commerce, privateering, and shipbuilding.

The result is a huge gigapixel image of a bird's eye view of early Baltimore. IRC computer programmers have made this scene navigable by touchscreen to zoom into the vast details of the city. Certain hotspots, such as the home of Mary Pickersgill, the seamstress who sewed the famous 'Star Spangled Banner' for Fort McHenry, or the observatory atop of Federal Hill signaling which merchant ships were headed to dock, can be located by tapping thumbnails, and additional information and visuals provided by the Maryland Historical Society can be found by accessing pop-up windows.

Toward an Archaeology of Baseball: Using GIS to think about big grassy fields in Alexandria, Virginia

Rebecca Siegal & Benjamin Skolnik, Alexandria Archaeology, City of Alexandria, VA

Despite being “America’s Pastime” for more than 150 years, archaeologists have contributed very little to the rich history of baseball. Perhaps, this should not come as a surprise given that despite requiring a large amount of land, no permanent infrastructure is needed to play the game and the few pieces of material culture required to play leave little in the archaeological record. Archaeologists for the City of Alexandria, VA have identified the locations of more than twenty baseball fields not from archaeological remains but from an early 20th century aerial survey, Sanborn fire insurance maps, and oral histories. In this paper, we use a GIS framework to survey existing archaeology related to baseball, view the sport of baseball through the lens of landscape archaeology as we locate and classify identified features, and examine these ephemeral remains as historic resources in a management context.