u/Total-Ad4827

I built a site that puts a historical marker on the old map sheets covering the ground it stands on. Georgia's 2,177 markers are on it now. Each page has the marker's text and the sheets for that spot, with a slider that fades to the modern map.

One of the ones I really like is in Camden County, on East Weed Street in St. Marys, dedicated 1953. It's called "First Pecan Trees Grown Here About 1840." The nuts were found floating at sea by Capt. Samuel F. Flood. His wife, Rebecca Grovenstine, planted them on Block 47, and the rest went into the north half of Block 26. The marker says the trees that came of those plantings were famous through the southeastern states before the Texas pecans were generally known.

https://preview.redd.it/1mbv6lo5hoqh1.png?width=1916&format=png&auto=webp&s=2a4398f5ba8b3cd94d21125d362ffcf84e9fea06

Five historic sheets sit under that pin. The 1852 one has Camden County and St. Marys R. lettered across it, twelve years after those trees went in. Go back to the 1764 French map of the coast and Cumberland Island is "I. de Cumberland" and Amelia is "I. Amelie." The other three are USGS sheets of the St. Marys quadrangle from 1918 and 1919. The scans come from collections like David Rumsey's at Stanford and from the USGS series.

https://preview.redd.it/78zrn6d8hoqh1.png?width=1916&format=png&auto=webp&s=00380461ee8589c5e08807daac4fbea0fbab4ee0

Marker texts and locations come from the Georgia Historical Society's own marker database, and every page credits the program and the body that erected that sign.

If you know these markers well, you likely know things about them that I don't. Every page has a way to report a problem, including the sign reading differently from what the page shows, and those come to me.

The marker pages are part of a genealogy site I run. Reading them takes no account and is absolutely free.

https://preview.redd.it/w81bb55bhoqh1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=1815be3ea965d6f1ecca3d4d5ef469c5f012d610

https://treealive.com/markers/ga

Edit: I checked with mods for Rule 5 before posting this.

I'm a solo developer. I put together a permanent page for each of New Mexico's scenic historic markers I could place, 398 of them, in all 33 counties. Free, no account, nothing to sign up for.

Each page carries the marker's full text, word for word, and puts the marker on a georeferenced historical map picked to match the era the text is about. Every one of the 398 landed on at least one period map, 297 old sheets in all, and 220 of them open on a map drawn before New Mexico was a state.

https://preview.redd.it/mt1075y3saph1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=e8f2e05c9e3688445f290c68878f9700d9ed01e1

Some that stopped me while working through them: Trinity Site, on a 1948 survey sheet. The Clanton gang's dugout hideouts in the Bootheel, on that same 1879 map. The stream-gauging station at Embudo, where the USGS trained its first hydrographers in 1888, on an 1882 government survey sheet.

The texts are the Historic Preservation Division's own, from the marker list it publishes. The Division says its list may be out of date and that it doesn't know where every marker stands today, and every page says so too. Most pins are the Division's coordinates. Where the list gives only a highway and a mile marker, I placed the pin from the state's road data and marked it approximate. I'm not the Division and don't speak for them, I just built the pages.

https://preview.redd.it/9coie4k6saph1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e67a26051cd07f51bd82da2538d51a46dfb8890

Every page has a report link. If a pin or a map looks off, use it. I read every one.

https://treealive.com/markers/nm

My day job on this site is family history, mapping a family tree onto old maps. Hope you enjoy taking a look at your history!

https://preview.redd.it/lxpgfi7jnbmh1.png?width=1880&format=png&auto=webp&s=e75e049df2a941901342b38b713c7227350cdb14

I build maps for genealogy research, and while wiring up historical places I ended up plotting the full National Register of Historic Places. The National Park Service publishes it as federal public domain data. Every listing is a single dot on a parchment-style basemap. 88,851 dots, all 50 states and DC, nothing aggregated or smoothed.

Browsable version here: https://treealive.com/markers?view=nr. Zoom in and the stipple separates back into individual places, and each dot opens a page with that listing's Register record, usually with the place drawn on a map from its own era.

Like this: Gettysburg National Military Park's page, with the 1873 battlefield survey laid over the modern map.

https://preview.redd.it/snlap1i0pbmh1.png?width=1376&format=png&auto=webp&s=7e997685c1b2b69b12cc25ffc0bd72adc79a5f2d

What struck me is how legible the shape of the work itself is at this scale. New England and the mid-Atlantic are nearly solid ink, and the sparse stretches say as much about where survey and nomination effort has gone as about what's standing.

Let me know what you think or what you might like to see added/changed!

The Fort Ashby marker stands where W. Va. 28 meets W. Va. 46 in Mineral County. Its text is the state's own, printed in 1937: Fort Ashby was the only fort still standing from the chain Colonel George Washington built along the Virginia frontier in 1755, there was "sharp fighting here, 1756," and in 1794 troops under General Daniel Morgan camped at the fort on their way to put down the Whiskey Rebellion.

The map under the pin was drawn in 1755, the year the fort chain went up. The pin sits in the upper Potomac country among the family names the mapmaker printed along the frontier creeks, with Winchester below and Lord Fairfax's boundary line running across the sheet. The same page carries a map from 1794, the year Morgan's troops camped there, so both events on the marker have a map of their own year.

https://preview.redd.it/ybj652td21lh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=282b60ff2266101e68b98e3072c08428a6b001dd

That is one of 308 West Virginia markers now online with their full texts, from all 55 counties. More than nine in ten open on a map drawn before 1900, and the median map under a marker was drawn in 1807. The oldest sheet in the set is from 1755 and sits under 39 of the markers. The texts reach from 1669 to 1929.

The words are the State Road Commission of West Virginia's, from its 1937 guide to the markers the state began putting up in 1934, written by Ross B. Johnston and credited on every page. These pages are the record the Commission printed in 1937, not a survey of what stands today, and each page says the text is presented as a historical document. The guide gives locations by road rather than by coordinates, so every pin is marked approximate. No ads, no account, nothing for sale.

https://treealive.com/markers/wv

The guide also printed texts for markers on county and state lines, and a few entries I could not place with enough confidence to pin; those have no pages yet.

https://preview.redd.it/c9p1t7yg21lh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=8324c827ec416c7247605376f487f664e729c876

My people were Pennsylvania. The first time I pointed this at my own tree it came back with more than seventy markers within ten miles of places my family had actually lived, and that is why I kept going. When West Virginia landed, the same run picked up a handful of these too. If your line runs through the state, it will do the same.

Every marker page has a report link on it. If you find one where the pin or the map looks off, use it, because I read every report.

In the 1970s nearly every Connecticut town put up a cast aluminum history marker, and the towns wrote the texts themselves: settlement, the green, the mills, who marched through in 1781. Most are still standing on town greens and outside town halls, and I have spent a while photographing and transcribing them.

Each marker now has its own permanent page: the full text as cast on the plate, where it stands, and the marker's story placed on georeferenced historical maps from the years it describes. Groton's marker tells the town's story from 1646 through the Battle of Groton Heights (1781), and its page opens on a map showing Connecticut around 1625, before the town existed, and runs to an 1893 survey sheet: treealive.com/m/ct-groton

https://preview.redd.it/mshihetxyykh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=87e8d40777332473f606fc47824e6a75642f2056

All 165 town pages are linked from one Connecticut map here: treealive.com/markers/ct

https://preview.redd.it/yx2jkzvzyykh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=82f9c4869285c44fa021252ac864bf82d49e0c0f

It is free, there is nothing to sign up for, and no family tree is needed for any of this. The texts are transcribed from the signs themselves, so if you spot something that does not match the plate in your town, every page has a report link and a person reads every report.

My own ancestors were mostly in Pennsylvania, but the site matches markers to any family tree, and 8 of these Connecticut markers stand near places people in my tree lived.

Hope you find it useful!

The Battle of Cooch's Bridge marker stands on Old Baltimore Pike outside Newark. The text is the state's own: on September 3, 1777, American light infantry and cavalry under General William Maxwell, "expert marksmen drafted by General Washington," met the advance guard of British and Hessian troops under Generals Howe, Cornwallis, and Knyphausen. The marker calls it the only battle of the American Revolution on Delaware soil, "claimed to have been the first in which the stars and stripes were carried."

The map under the pin was drawn in 1777, while that campaign was happening. It is titled for the seat of war around Philadelphia, and the whole theater is on it: the Elk River where the British landed, Wilmington where Washington's army camped, and Philadelphia, which fell three weeks after the battle. The tablet also carries its own history in its last lines: first erected by "the patriotic societies and citizens of the State of Delaware" on September 3, 1901, inscription revised by the Historic Markers Commission in 1932.

https://preview.redd.it/pgzr8q4y9skh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=9aaba285714adbd4e223e8ea892a49a212b6ac21

That is one of 691 Delaware markers now online, from all three counties, each with its full inscription. Almost nine in ten open on a map drawn before 1900. The oldest sheet in the set was drawn in 1630, and a 1708 French map of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania sits under 47 of them. The Delaware Public Archives has drafted the text of every state marker since 1931, and the newest markers in the set went up this year.

The words are the State of Delaware Historical Markers Program's, administered by the Delaware Public Archives, credited on every page, and I have their written permission to use them. The program's own site is at https://archives.delaware.gov/delaware-historical-markers/ and it is the place to go for the program itself. What I did differently is put each inscription on an old map of the ground it describes. No ads, no account, nothing for sale.

https://treealive.com/markers/de

https://preview.redd.it/6838m1r4askh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=5da360343680d0a4acf13575b4a966c3072699a1

My ancestors were mostly in Pennsylvania. The first time I pointed this at my own tree it came back with more than seventy markers within ten miles of places my family had actually lived, and that's why I kept going. When Delaware landed, the same run picked up three of these, one of them a marker called Washington Dined Here. If your line runs through Delaware, it will do the same.

Every marker page has a report link on it. If you find one where the pin or the map looks off, use it, because I read every report. Hope you find it useful!

Earlier this month I posted the statewide historical marker map here. This is a closer look at one town.

The Library of Congress holds John Bachelder's 1876 maps of Gettysburg, drawn on the Warren survey of the field and built up from years of veterans' accounts of where each unit stood. I could not find georeferenced versions of them anywhere, so I georeferenced them, and then set five PHMC markers on them as stops.

https://preview.redd.it/avg917gvbrjh1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=4be89d1993a3cf5d3ea9452bf0f890dee6b0c370

The July 1 marker on US 30 west of town opens on Bachelder's first-day sheet. East Cavalry Field opens on an 1880 map of the Gregg and Stuart fight, which comes in two sheets, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 2 to 5 p.m. The Wills House and the Gettysburg Address markers open on the 1873 Warren survey. Any stop can be flipped to the other sheets that cover it.

The two town markers were the pair I did not expect. Read together, the state's own text says Lincoln wrote the address in Washington, revised it after he reached Gettysburg on the evening of November 18, and completed it in David Wills's house on the square.

https://preview.redd.it/nq48ygtybrjh1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=692a4ce80f06cfa4fae5ae792cb9ec9d67c7360d

I built the site this runs on. It is free, no ads and no account, the marker text is PHMC's and credited on every stop, and the sheets are credited to the Library of Congress and the David Rumsey collection. Corrections welcome, on the georeferencing or anything else I got wrong.

https://treealive.com/markers/pa/trail/gettysburg-1863

John Bachelder spent years collecting veterans' accounts to fix where every unit stood at Gettysburg, and his three official day-by-day maps were published in 1876 on the Warren survey base. The Library of Congress has high-resolution scans, but I could not find georeferenced versions anywhere, so I georeferenced all three myself.

https://preview.redd.it/x737ywtlzljh1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=416eaf0697ff8b9d6eeea7201baf5c85d706850a

Then I lined up five of Pennsylvania's official state markers as stops on top of them: the marker where the fighting opened on July 1 on the Day 1 sheet, East Cavalry Field on the 1880 Gregg and Stuart engagement map, the retreat marker on the Day 3 sheet, and the Wills House and Gettysburg Address markers on the 1873 Warren survey. Each stop shows the marker's official text (PHMC's words, credited), and you can flip any stop to the other sheets, including all three Bachelder days.

https://preview.redd.it/7ovhntsnzljh1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=1a6828c1447394d5aface4f6646771676bbad987

I built the site this runs on, so this is my own work. Corrections welcome: sheet choice per stop, georeferencing errors you can spot against ground features, anything I got wrong.

https://treealive.com/markers/pa/trail/gettysburg-1863

The Battle of Fort Sullivan marker stands on Sullivan's Island, out by Fort Moultrie. The text is the state program's own: 435 men under Col. William Moultrie in an unfinished fort of palmetto logs, against nine ships and up to 3,000 infantry, and log walls that "absorbed or deflected the British shells." The reverse ends by saying that is where the Palmetto State nickname comes from.

The map under the pin is a 1776 plan of that attack, from the Boston Public Library. The island is lettered SULIVAN'S on it, with the Myrtle Grove written across the middle. The pin sits on the little star fort the mapmaker drew, and east of that, out in the water, something is labeled an Armed Hulk.

https://preview.redd.it/78rkbm46gjjh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=36c62e648d371a073783a32b99619a6cf1039b17

Where a sign is lettered on both sides, both sides are on the page. A 1708 French map of Carolina sits under 88 of them. The oldest marker with a date on it went up in 1938 and the newest this year.

The text is the South Carolina Historical Marker Program's. Archives and History is credited on every page, with a link back to them. Nearly every page also names the local group that put the marker up. Fort Sullivan's was the Fort Sullivan Chapter of the DAR.

Archives and History has its own marker map and it is good. What I did differently is put the inscription on the old map of the ground it describes.

https://treealive.com/markers/sc

70 of these markers are flagged missing in the program's own records, and those pages say so. Another 20 records in their list have no page here at all. Eight have no coordinate on file. Six put their coordinates in one county and name another, so there is no pin I can defend. The rest are old casts the program already replaced, and the replacement is the one with the page.

https://preview.redd.it/kete5d59gjjh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=f87abd33675d3e48153db2285645bcfb7eca4b12

My ancestors mostly were Pennsylvania, and the first time I pointed my tree at that state's markers it came back with more than seventy of them within ten miles of somewhere my family had actually lived, and that is why I kept going. If your line runs through here, it will do the same with these.

The marker for the Cathedral of St. Augustine calls the parish "the oldest Catholic parish within the present day United States," dating from a mass celebrated in 1565. Its pin lands on a sheet engraved in Venice in 1778 by Antonio Zatta. The town is on it as S. Agoſtino, spelled with the old long s.

https://preview.redd.it/jbydcpzuh1jh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e35d91c76574f63227d272b976fcee3a45c35ee

That is one of 1,219 Florida state historical markers I put online, across 65 counties, each with its full inscription. The maps under them run from a 1764 chart to the modern day.

https://preview.redd.it/gfbjuvlyh1jh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=ad0ab6a92d8d4b4f58b30e61cd8d60d03b977e63

Down in Key West, the 1921 USGS quadrangle of the island carries nine markers. Among them is the African Cemetery at Higgs Beach: "Near this site lie the remains of 294 African men, women and children who died in Key West in 1860."

The inscriptions are the program's own words, credited and linked on every page to the Florida Historical Marker Program, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State.

https://treealive.com/markers/fl

Locations come from the program's records. Where the state's coordinates and its stated county disagree, I left the marker out until I can be sure, so 1,219 is not quite the whole list.

When looking at another state, my tree's Pennsylvania roots matched 77 markers there to my own line, which is the whole reason it exists. Florida makes ten states included on the site now, so a Florida tree gets checked against all of these markers, and against the other nine states if your people arrived from somewhere else. It's completely free with no login or anything else.

Starting in 1930 the Minnesota Historical Society picked the sites and wrote the inscriptions for a run of roadside historical markers, and the State Highway Department made the signs and set them up. By 1940 there were 112 of them on the state's trunk and U.S. highways, and a WPA survey published a guide that printed all 112 inscriptions word for word. 107 of them are on the map. Each page has the whole 1940 entry and the old maps that cover that spot.

https://preview.redd.it/fh5mw51m41jh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=af4381968cfa37a2fbdfa3637e307848557c0854

The First Iron Mine marker near Soudan records that the first commercial shipment of Minnesota iron ore left the Breitung pit on July 31, 1884, over a railroad Charlemagne Tower and associates had just finished building to open the Vermillion Range. Under the pin is a Map of Northern Minnesota from 1874, ten years earlier. It letters Vermillion Lake right where the pin sits. Around it the mapmaker drew forest in every direction and one road running south.

https://preview.redd.it/tqm5p59o41jh1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=c6a1ca1d3a59ed1f82eb0162dd393c852442368e

Marker text comes from the 1940 guide, "Guide to Historic Markers Erected by the State Highway Department Cooperating with the Minnesota Historical Society," published by the Minnesota Historical Records Survey Project, Work Projects Administration. It is public domain and credited on every page.

https://treealive.com/markers/mn

Five of the 112 could not be placed from what the book says. One of them, entry 99, gives a location that lands in one county and names another, so there is no pin I can defend. Nothing in the guide is a coordinate, so the pins are my best reading and the pages say so. These pages show the 1940 book, not what stands on the road now. The text is served exactly as printed, including the era's own terms, and every page carries a line saying Minnesota now calls the 1862 conflict the U.S.-Dakota War and has since replaced the wording on some of these signs.

The site's actual job is family trees. I ran my own Pennsylvania family through it and it turned up 77 markers near the places they lived. Free, no account needed.

The marker program here is the oldest in the country. It started in 1927, and the state printed a companion guidebook so travelers could read the inscriptions without stopping the car. By 1948 the book was in its sixth edition, with every inscription in full plus the letter-and-number symbol cast on each post.

That book is public domain now, so I put it online. 826 of its markers got a page with the full 1948 text, placed on georeferenced maps from the era it describes.

https://preview.redd.it/woe6x8bc3mih1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=896cf00840920529c99c7b8680a09e6e54614f41

The book puts "To Yorktown" at Lee Hall in Newport News: "On this road, seven miles north, is Yorktown, where Cornwallis surrendered to Washington and Rochambeau on October 19, 1781." The map under it was drawn by the French in 1781, and its title, translated, is the part of Virginia where the combined army of France and the United States took Lord Cornwallis's army prisoner on October 19, 1781. Same date on both.

https://preview.redd.it/jss7ewrf3mih1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=14fc32161f03c63037232b186198c4c3fb30e5eb

The texts are exactly as printed in 1948 and the pages say so. Virginia has revised or replaced a lot of marker texts since then. The current program belongs to the Department of Historic Resources. Locations in the book are road distances measured from 1948 town limits, so the pins are approximate, and the pages say that too. Text comes from the state's own guidebook, scanned at HathiTrust, credited on every page.

https://treealive.com/markers/va

The site is really a family tree mapper, that's why I built it. My own family is from Pennsylvania, and 77 of that state's markers turned out to stand near places my ancestors lived. Run a Virginia family through it and it does the same with these. Free, no account.

In 1930, for the 300th anniversary of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Commonwealth cast 275 iron markers and set them along the roads, one story each, with the text revised by the historian Samuel Eliot Morison. I put all 275 on a map. Every dot is a page with that marker's full 1930 inscription, placed on georeferenced maps from the period it commemorates.

https://preview.redd.it/pxx5zqyjfdih1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=0e5f31dee0ed95d8569930d6e4dfe98ded88e2ca

Here is one of them. Merrymount, on Pilgrim Boulevard in Quincy: "Thomas Morton, a merry Englishman, set up an eighty-foot maypole here in 1627, named the place Ma-re Mount, and dispensed good cheer. The Puritans, scandalized by his revels and endangered by his arms traffic with the Indians, deported him and cut the maypole down." The oldest sheet under that pin is John Smith's map of New England, printed in 1624, three years before Morton raised his maypole. On it the water north of the pin is lettered "Talbotts Bay" and the shore just south of it "London," part of a set of English names Prince Charles handed out that mostly never took. Five sheets sit under this marker, 1624 to 1852.

https://preview.redd.it/g5h0gfumfdih1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=442faec08b20d6f82ecc5daaf760f83eab614a51

What pulled me into this: a lot of these signs are not out there anymore. When MassDOT began restoring markers in 2019, about 174 of the original 275 were still standing, and nobody seems to have a firm accounting of the rest. The 1930 book that lists every one of them is still complete, so the map is complete even where the roadside is not.

Marker text comes from the Commonwealth's own 1930 book, "Historical Markers Erected by Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission," scanned at archive.org, public domain by age and credited on every page.

https://treealive.com/markers/ma

The 1930 book gives each marker's location in words, "Route 3A near Spring Street," not coordinates, so every pin here is approximate and every page says so. The inscriptions are served exactly as cast in 1930, which means some of them carry 1930's framing of colonial history, particularly where they describe Native people. I did not rewrite any of it. Each page says "1930 text, presented as a historical document."

I built this because I map family trees. When I ran my own tree against these, 14 of the 275 stood near places my ancestors lived. If your family is from Massachusetts, it will show you which markers stand near their places. Free, no account needed.

Every dot on this statewide map is a page with the marker's full inscription, placed on georeferenced maps from the period it commemorates.

https://preview.redd.it/6bwttgrz89ih1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=d025dc022013c3f6c176867b485417e01b4c068f

Here's a single marker: The Landing of Cadillac, on Woodward Avenue near Hart Plaza in Detroit, with its text on the page in both English and French. On July 24, 1701, in the marker's words, "Cadillac landed and planted the flag of France, taking possession of the territory in the name of King Louis XIV." The oldest sheet under it is an 1815 Map of Detroit River and Adjacent Country, where the mapmaker drew the star-shaped fort and the small town grid on that same stretch of riverbank; the map picker on the page runs from 1815 to 1903.

https://preview.redd.it/i29pifc299ih1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=4929cd68657be98d0a0688239c65d2c5adc8f1fb

Marker data is the Michigan History Center's own public dataset, credited on every page. Where a marker has different text on each side, both sides are on the page, including the French on some Detroit-area markers, exactly as cast.

https://treealive.com/markers/mi

I built it because I map family trees. When I ran my own Pennsylvania family against that state's markers, 77 of them stood near places my ancestors lived. If your family is from Michigan, it will show you which markers stand near their places. Free, no account needed.

Every dot on this statewide map is a page with the marker's full inscription, placed on georeferenced maps from the period it commemorates.

https://preview.redd.it/hulyemltm6ih1.png?width=1350&format=png&auto=webp&s=311ff9c7c40f468319fb6502aa60a66f81bca8bf

Here's a single marker: Trenton Ferry, where Washington crossed through Trenton on the way to his inauguration in 1789. It's pinned on a 1777 plan of Washington's operations in New Jersey, and the mapmaker drew and labeled the ferry itself. You can step between sheets from 1777 to 1807.

https://preview.redd.it/7ajst36wm6ih1.png?width=960&format=png&auto=webp&s=37b10be5541d704c1612e4f0e78c891c8290264d

Marker data is the New Jersey Historical Commission's own public list, credited on every page.

https://treealive.com/markers/nj

The state list runs to 428 markers. One of them I can't yet place reliably, so it's not on the map, and markers the list locates only by its old survey notes are labeled "location approximate" on their pages until I can do better.

I built it because I map family trees. When I ran my own family against these markers, 61 of New Jersey's stood near places my ancestors lived, from Newark and Morristown down to Salem County. If your family is from New Jersey, it will show you which markers stand near their places. Free, no account needed.

Correction: the state list is 455 markers, not 428. I dropped the whole Somerset County section transcribing the state's PDF. Two people in this thread caught it within an hour of posting. 27 Somerset markers are up now, so 454 of 455.