Instructify

August 26, 2009

One of my fondest memories growing up was this time when my friends and I found an old treasure map. We eventually ran afoul of a family of gangsters, but my one heavyset buddy was able to befriend the deformed son of the head gangster, Mama Fratelli. Just as the gangsters caught up with us, Chunk and his new friend, Sloth, were able to swoop in and save the day. We were, truly, a bunch of Goonies. No, wait—there I go again, confusing myself with Corey Feldman.

That image you get in your mind when you imagine treasure maps isn’t just fascinating because of the promise of riches. That classic example of some old, yellow, frayed-at-the-edges map also maybe has some crazy artwork of an agitated seabeast where there be dragons or something. You can just feel the wonder of exploration resonating from old-world cartography.

The David Rumsey Historical Map Collection has been busy scanning these old maps and making them available free-of-charge in digital high-resolution images. Recently, they added more than 150 of their historical maps to Google Earth and Google Maps. You can read their description of the project and find a list of maps here. It’s very cool to see those old parchment paper maps and how they measure up against the modern satellite images. They are a great visual aide for showing your class not only how early explorers gained a grasp on the new places they were discovering, but also how accurate their surveying work turned out. You can also show your class how certain cities and territories developed over time, like how many cities sprung up around the Mississippi River since 1775, for example.

Those are just two ideas for use, pretty much off the top of my head. Participate in the comments and share some ideas you might have for using these!

Historical maps on Google Maps and Google Earth