Old Yosemite maps / David Rumsey Map Collection

Gadget of the Week | SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2012
The David Rumsey Map Collection
By CRYSTAL KIM

Search more 33,500 high-resolution, digitized maps, mainly of North and South America from the 18th and 19th centuries—and see what the terrain looks like now, courtesy of Google Earth.

... davidrumsey.com, a free Website featuring the David Rumsey Map Collection. A real-estate developer who made what he calls an "accidental fortune" in partnership with Chuck Feeney (who made an even greater fortune at Duty Free Stores), Rumsey retired in 1995 to pursue other passions. "Maps sated my inclination for art, science, and history," he says.

Rumsey started digitizing the 150,000-map collection in the late 1990s, developing imaging and search technology along the way. Among the maps, atlases, and lithographs available are Sebastian Adams's 1881 Sychronological Chart of Universal History, a 23-foot-long timeline from 4004 B.C. to the late 19th century, and American Telephone and Telegraph's 1891 map of communications lines in the Northeast. Five thousand new maps are being added to the site every year. Rumsey plans to donate the collection to Stanford University by 2014.

The site can be searched by key word, time period, region, and cartographer. A partnership with Google Earth lets users superimpose satellite images on antique maps (sometimes manipulating the image to fit the actual topography), allowing you to find historic locations and follow the modern roads that will take you there.

http://online.barrons.com/article/SB50001424053111904294104577638740212056030.html?mod=BOL_twm_col

Yosemite search :
http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/view/search?sort=Pub_List_No_InitialSort%2CPub_Date%2CPub_List_No%2CSeries_No&q=yosemite

Thanks for posting this. It's a very cool tool and has occupied my time for the last couple hours looking at old maps of yosemite and photos of the place from 144 years ago. Fun stuff.

This is great!!!! Thanks for posting. I can see how I could spend hours looking at everything.