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Archive: 2017 (5 Posts)

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

The Elusive Nicaragua Canal

Posted by: Tim St. Onge

For over one hundred years, the Panama Canal has been a world-renowned marvel of engineering, creating a vital shipping link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. But at the turn of the 20th century, if it were not for some eleventh hour political maneuvering, and perhaps a very persuasive postage stamp, perhaps the famous canal …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Grafton Tyler Brown, Trailblazing Cartographer of the American West

Posted by: Tim St. Onge

Historically, “cartographer” has commonly been a profession wearing many hats: artist, craftsman, communicator, documentarian, entrepreneur, and pioneer (among many others). To celebrate cartographers who embraced these multitudes of roles to achieve success, it is worth remembering their stories. Today, we recognize Grafton Tyler Brown, a trailblazing African American cartographer of the Pacific Northwest. Brown was …

Brown, red, and yellow tinted map illustration of the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, with a circular frame around them

Modest Monuments: The District of Columbia Boundary Stones

Posted by: Tim St. Onge

The oldest set of federally placed monuments in the United States are strewn along busy streets, hidden in dense forests, lying unassumingly in residential front yards and church parking lots. Many are fortified by small iron fences, and one resides in the sea wall of a Potomac River lighthouse. Lining the current and former boundaries …