The world at your fingertips

Austin at Il Filosofo has an intriguing post about an Italian who used the satellite images from Google Maps and Google Earth to discover an archeoligical site.

That's a man after my own heart, a world away.

I've mentioned my interest in ghosttowning before. One of the problems with visiting ghost towns is that the old towns are constantly decaying. Sometimes snow does them in, while others succumb to wildfires. Others just give in over time.

So when you set out to visit a ghost town, you don't always know what you'll find. Years ago, I discovered that I could scope out some ghost towns by using Terraserver's satellite imagery. (Some areas weren't in the Terra server, especially some of the more remote sites and definitely those located near U.S. military training ranges.) By looking at the area in the highest possible resolution, I could--like a good aerial recon analyst--pick out unnatural characteristics, such as buildings, roads, and mine tailings piles.

For instance, in the mountains of California, close to the Nevada border, there's a lot of mining activity. At Terraserver's aerial photos, I can see roads, a runoff pond from milling activity and a couple of buildings. To see the closeup, click here.

The dark part-oval at the top left is the (dry) runoff pond, laced with dangerous chemicals that were used to draw ore out of the dirt brought out of the mine shafts. The roads are pretty self-explanatory. Just to the right of the center, you see several small rectangles that are the mill and several outbuildings. (Between the trees that form both a sideways colon and a sideways exclamation point.)

Unfortunately, Google Maps--which is so easy to use--doesn't have enough resolution of the same area to match Terraserver (dinosaur that it is).

In the picture below, you see the mill remains in a view slightly north and east of the building.

This hi-tech research could come in handy next time I'm exploring the old West. I know for a fact it could save me a trip through rough country only to find that nothing remains of a town other than a few holes bored in the rock. (Although even those are interesting to me.)

Posted by JRC at September 15, 2005 10:27 PM | TrackBack