UNDER THE SHEET

The old paper sits on top. Slide the fader at the bottom of the screen to dissolve down to today.

FIELD KIT

For walking it. Record where you actually went, and pull the sheet into the phone before you lose signal.

GPS is off.

PRINT ROOM

The timeline has already settled the hard part, which printing you are on. All that is left is a frame and a paper size. The print is the old sheet at full strength, whatever the fader is doing.

No printing open yet.

RECORD THE DISSOLVE

A dissolve between every plate you pick, ending on today's aerial photography if you want it to. One plate and today is the short version. Opening this switches the reference layer to aerial, so what the box is showing you is what comes out.

No printing open yet.

NAVIGATE THE PAST

The USGS has been mapping the same ground over and over since the 1880s, and every printing survives as a scan. This puts all of them in one stack, oldest at the bottom, and hands you a GPS so you can go stand on a trail that stopped being drawn in 1957.

Sheets: USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, served by Esri. Reference layers: USGS National Map. Terrain: Mapzen via AWS.

BUY ME A COFFEE
Reading the catalog…
SHEET TODAY
NAVIGATE THE PAST
Pulling the sheets off the shelf…