Ghost town mapping
Hi! I’m in the research phase of writing a book about a ghost town in eastern California. As part of it, I want to create accurate maps of the town and its mines.
For the mines, I have been using the USGS MRDS database, which is unfortunately inaccurate in the area, so next time I’m there, I’ll be getting GPS coordinates on all the mine features. This is within my capabilities to do.
What’s a bit beyond my capabilities is the town itself. I plan on finding foundations and comparing those to historical photos (of which there are few.) There are very few structures left. I got the USGS lidar data, but filtering out the vegetation in the area is difficult because it’s largely sagebrush, and I am a complete novice at this.
Can anyone suggest methods for finding the locations of historical buildings (town was active until 1915ish) either using publicly available data or other methods? It would be an absolute amazing help in getting my book up to the quality I want.