OpenHistoricalMap

Mapper Highlight: OpenHistoricalMap(pers)

May 28, 2026 · OpenStreetMap US Staff, Richard Welty, Dan Vanderkam, and Matthew Anderson

Browsing through openhistoricalmap.org is a personal tour of passion projects, obsessions, and areas of awe-inspiring expertise. The area of the map you’re looking at may appear sparse, save for a few boundaries,...

Historical Mapping with OpenHistoricalMap, OldInsuranceMaps.net, and Yesterdays

Jan 31, 2026 · Jacob Hall, Mike O'Brien, Jeff Meyer, and Adam Cox

From georeferencing historical Sanborn fire insurance maps on OldInsuranceMaps.net, to georeferencing historical photographs, to mapping through time on OpenHistoricalMap, we’ll share demos and how to get involved.

History Hits the Road

Jan 30, 2026 · Minh Nguyễn

Charter Projects Face Uncertain Future as Financial Support Ends

Jul 29, 2025 · OpenStreetMap US Staff

Many of the best OpenStreetMap tools emerge organically as personal projects built by members of the global community. Informal structures can be great for getting a project off the ground, but at...

OpenHistoricalMap Office Hours

Jan 25, 2025 · Minh Nguyễn

Join the OpenHistoricalMap community for our annual informal office hours. Get advice from fellow mappers, brainstorm some focus areas for the coming year, and give feedback to the OHM advisory group.

OpenStreetMap US Wrapped: A Year in Review for 2024

Dec 19, 2024 · OpenStreetMap US Staff

2024 was a year of exciting growth for both OpenStreetMap and the OpenStreetMap US team. Let’s celebrate some of the highlights! The Team Grew OSM US welcomed Jake Low, Software Engineer, and...

OpenHistoricalMap: The Most Open-Ended Map in History

Oct 18, 2024 · Minh Nguyễn

OpenHistoricalMap (openhistoricalmap.org) is a time machine brought to you by the community that built OpenStreetMap. Zoom into any neighborhood in the world, turn to any time period in history, and there you...

Turbulent Waters: Showing the Historical Extent and Impact of Natural and Human Activities in OpenHistoricalMap

Jun 8, 2024 · David Jenne

Historic (and prehistoric) changes in water levels, some due to dam building and others resulting from natural processes, have had significant influence on geography. The changes include dam construction, a major dam...

Lowercase history: micromapping the past

Jun 8, 2024 · Minh Nguyễn

History is about far more than empires, wars, and migration. The same attention to detail that makes OpenStreetMap special – that human touch – also makes OpenHistoricalMap stand out in the field...

Event Mapping: new territory for OpenHistoricalMap

Jun 7, 2024 · Richard Welty

Experimentation has started on mapping events in OpenHistoricalMap. Potential subjects include the routes of explorers and their expeditions, and mapping battles and campaigns. We will discuss available resources, static elements (traditional mapping),...

State of the OpenHistoricalMap 2024

Jun 7, 2024 · Jeff Meyer, Minh Nguyễn, and Richard Welty

This session will provide an overview of the health of the OpenHistoricalMap project, as measured by active user growth, data contributed, supporting systems that are in place, as well as by reviewing...

OpenHistoricalMap: What's new in the world of old?

Feb 21, 2024 · Jeff Meyer, Minh Nguyễn, and Richard Welty

There’s a lot of new happenings in the home of old mapping, OpenHistoricalMap. This mappy hour will cover a few topics, including: The recent Newberry Library Atlas of Historical County Boundaries import...

Too many tabs: leveraging sister projects to stay organized

Jan 19, 2024 · Minh Nguyễn

We’ve all been there: fixing one little thing leads to a rabbit hole of research. Learn to escape the hole and Keep Mapping Fun by contributing in tandem to OpenStreetMap, OpenHistoricalMap, Wikidata,...

OpenHistoricalMap: Doing History

Jun 11, 2023 · Richard Welty

History is harder than it looks. While there may be one true set of facts, almost immediately after an event, facts start getting lost or confused. Research is harder than just looking...

Turbocharging Local Historical Societies with OpenHistoricalMap

Jun 11, 2023 · Jeff Meyer

Odds are, your local community has at least one, if not several historical societies, and OHM has all the tools to help them get off the ground with building old maps of...

Mapping Old Richmond with OldInsuranceMaps & OpenHistoricalMap

Jun 10, 2023 · Jeff Meyer

Let’s leave Richmond better than we found it by putting this city’s long history on OpenHistoricalMap. Whether you’re into mapping buildings, railroads, businesses, or something else, let’s see how much progress we...

Mapping the turn of the Century with OpenHistoricalMap and oldinsurancemaps.net

Jun 9, 2023 · Jeff Meyerand Adam Cox

oldinsurancemaps.net has just made it very easy to set up tile maps of 19th century Sanborn Insurance maps and edit them in OpenHistoricalMap. This session will talk about how the two projects...

The OpenHistoricalMap experiment

Jun 9, 2023 · Richard Welty

OpenHistoricalMap has proven to be a big laboratory. The original concept was very simple in conception, but has unearthed a huge number of considerations. Those considerations have resulted in a lot of...

Linking Wikimedia and OpenStreetMap

Nov 11, 2022 · Richard Welty

This session will cover the mechanisms that exist for specifying cross connections between various Wikimedia projects (Commons, Wikidata, Wikipedia) and OpenStreetMap and OpenHistoricalMap. There are connectivity mechanisms in existence that can significantly...

A Brief Technical History of OpenHistoricalMap

Apr 2, 2022 · Sanjay Bhangar

I have been involved with the OpenHistoricalMap project since its inception - what started out as an idea more than 10 years ago, to use the OpenStreetMap software to map historical objects,...

OpenHistoricalMap: Time

Apr 2, 2022 · Richard Welty

A quick summary of the current status of time processing in OpenHistoricalMap and discussion of future plans and ideas.

OpenHistoricalMap: Life Cycle

Apr 1, 2022 · Richard Welty

OpenHistoricalMap by its nature must provide more extensive and robust Life Cycle support than OpenStreetMap. This presentation looks at some approaches and discusses some current experiments. Considerations discussed include both UI/UX issues...

OpenHistoricalMap: Mapping the Erie Canal

Oct 27, 2021 · Richard Welty

This OpenStreetMap US Virtual Mappy Hour features guest speaker Richard Welty presenting on OpenHistoricalMap, showcasing the process behind mapping the Erie Canal.

OpenHistoricalMap Welcomed As An OSM US Charter Project

May 26, 2021 · Maggie Cawley

OpenStreetMap US is excited to announce our latest Charter Project - OpenHistoricalMap! As a project, OpenHistoricalMap has existed in some form since 2012 and is well-known in the OSM ecosystem. We had...

Workshop: Mapping USA's History on OpenHistoricalMap

May 22, 2021 · Jeff Meyer

Mapping History in the Pacific Northwest

May 21, 2021 · Nathan Proudfoot

In this talk, I plan to talk about mapping history on OpenHistoricalMap where I have been working on mapping time within the northwest. I would also like to go over how to...

Mapping USA's History on OpenHistoricalMap

May 21, 2021 · Jeff Meyer

We will showcase the progress of the OHM platform for use in historical mapping, focused on US history-related topics. We can talk about any scale of project or focus, with an emphasis...

OpenHistoricalMap: Approaching Critical Mass

Oct 30, 2020 · Jeff Meyer

OpenHistoricalMap Overview

Jul 8, 2020 · Richard Welty

This OpenStreetMap US Virtual Mappy Hour features guest presenters from the OpenHistoricalMap project.

Update on OpenHistoricalMap: Using the OpenStreetMap stack live with vector tiles

Sep 8, 2019 · Jeff Meyer

We’ve finally gotten around to updating OHM with a variety of enhancements. This sessions will cover both (a) the tech upgrades & tradeoffs we’ve made to support a time slider and other...

OpenStreetMap vs. Blockchain to Tell the Historical Mapping Story

Oct 5, 2018 · Jeremy Lechtzin

Services, applications and tools continue to be developed that map archival data to tell the history of people and places. Some US (and US-adjacent) examples: the trio of OldSF / OldNYC /...

Posts tagged "OpenHistoricalMap"