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Didn’t win a mug last time? No worries – we are launching another Citizen Historian Giveaway today! There are two maps on the Building Use App that are almost complete. Can you help finish them? Calumet 1888 is 95% complete and Lake Linden 1917 is 60% complete – we are so close to having every building on these maps classified! If you can get the building counter in the lower left corner to 100% just send us a screenshot and we will send you a Keweenaw Time Traveler mug. Send us a message on Facebook or email rchildeb@mtu.edu with your screenshot or if you have any questions.
Keep in mind that these last few buildings tend to be the most difficult to classify, so we have created a mini handbook found below to help you finish the map.
Keep in mind that these last few buildings tend to be the most difficult to classify, so we have created a mini handbook found below to help you finish the map.
Building Use Classification Handbook
- The Sanborn Fire Insurance Company that produced these maps used several abbreviations to label buildings. Use this guide to help you determine if a building should be classified as "Dwelling", "Automobile", "Store", "Industrial", or "Public".
- Watch the video below for visual instruction on how to use the Building Use App.
- Several of the remaining buildings are small, unmarked buildings - these buildings are classified based on the lot type they are on. If they are near a house they would be marked as a "Dwelling" and if they are on an industrial lot they would be marked as "Industrial"
- Some of the remaining buildings have a large X from corner to corner - these buildings are "Stables" and their classification also depends on if the lot is domestic or industrial
This is a "Stable" and would be classified as a "Store" as it is on a lot with other stores
This building would be classified as a "Dwelling" as it is on a lot with other dwellings
- If you have any questions about how to classify a certain building send us a message on Facebook or email rchildeb@mtu.edu!
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The Department of Geological and Mining Engineering Sciences (GMES) is happy to announce that Master's student Daniel J. Lizzadro-McPherson's talk, Remapping the Keweenaw Fault and Discovery of Related Structures in Michigan's Historic Copper District, was awarded the Best Graduate Oral Presentation from the Geological Society of America's 2020 North-Central Section Meeting, held online this past May. The talk was featured in the Unique Geology and Geoheritage of the Lake Superior Region Session led by Erika Vye, William Rose, Jim Miller, and James DeGraff. Lizzadro-McPherson presented on the history of mapping the Keweenaw Fault and the current remapping efforts aimed at understanding this complex fault system in northern Keweenaw County. For more information about this project or to receive a link to the virtual presentation, please email djlizzad@mtu.edu.
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A combination of several built and social environmental factors allows archaeologists to better contextualize data.
HESAL Post-Doctoral Researcher Dan Trepal recently co-authored an article with HESAL director Don Lafreniere and Jason Gilliland (University of Western Ontario) titled "Historical Spatial-Data Infrastructures for Archaeology: Towards a Spatiotemporal Big-Data Approach to Studying the Postindustrial City" in the journal Historical Archaeology. This article discusses the ways in which big-data GIS infrastructures for historical research, such as that underpinning the Keweenaw Time Traveler, can be useful for archaeologists who study historical cities. Archaeologists excavating urban sites are expert at revealing hidden aspects of day to day life at small scales. The paper uses examples, including several from the Time Traveler, to show how using historical big-data in a GIS-based digital infrastructure sources allows archaeologists to place their evidence of day to day life in a broader context built from many thousands of individual pieces of historical information. When combined, the archaeology and historical big data give us new perspectives on past people, places, and things that may be impossible to see when using one kind of evidence alone.