? Civil War Washington

About the Civil War Washington Maps and GIS

Maps, map-making, and cartography played crucial roles in the Civil War, and we believe they play similarly important roles in the current study and understanding of the war-time capital. Civil War Washington has created a project geographical information system (GIS), which combines historical maps and historical information with modern technology. The dynamic map interface allows users to examine digitized period maps of the District, to move between current and historical views, and to select one or more feature layers (such as hospitals, theaters, and freedmen's villages) and view information about these locations. Tools for search and analysis are also available.

The standard historical basemap used by Civil War Washington is Albert Boschke's Topographical Map of the District of Columbia. According to the Library of Congress, Boschke was a German-born civil engineer who had completed a detailed map of Washington, DC for the year 1857, documenting the location of all buildings in the District. He and his team continued to survey the District leading up to the ultimate publication of this comprehensive topographical map in early 1861. The United States War Department seized the map (and the engraved copper plates from which it was published) shortly after publication, near the beginning of the Civil War.

Civil War Washington obtained an image file for Boschke's map from the Library of Congress's Photoduplication Service, and the image was subsequently georeferenced using a total of 491 ground control points. Documentation of the georeferencing process is available below; in the near future, this data will also be available for download.

Along with Boschke's historical map, the Civil War Washington GIS includes 17 point, line, and polygon layers representing locations of bawdy houses, canals, churches, forts, fort boundaries (outlining the geographical extent of the fort), freedmen's villages, government buildings, hospitals, omnibus routes, police stations, police precincts, railroad lines, streams, street railways, theaters, voting wards, and residences of Walt Whitman. The placement of each point is approximate and has often been based on relative location information (such as intersections). Users should consider the approximate nature of the locations when drawing conclusions or basing interpretations on the Civil War Washington map. The historical locations of features have been determined from a variety of primary and secondary source materials, including city directories, historical newspaper articles, archival records, journal articles, and monographs. Each point feature is linked to a record in the project database, which includes more detailed information about the place. The mapping of these places and not others at this stage results from the organic growth of the project and research aims. We plan to map many other types of features as the project develops. We continue to actively develop the GIS.

The GIS application also presents a second historical basemap, J. G. Barnard's Map of the Environs of Washington. Barnard's map, identified as "compiled from Boschke's map of the District of Columbia and from surveys of the U.S. Coast Survey," accompanied his Report on the Defenses of Washington to the Chief of Engineers U.S. Army (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1871). We include Barnard's map because it depicts a larger area than Boschke's, an area which includes the more than five dozen forts that surrounded the District during the war.

In addition to these historical maps, the GIS presents a current topographical map and a current satellite image. Users can move between these maps using a slider bar. Historical feature layers can be viewed, or turned off, from any map view.

The Civil War Washington GIS web application was customized from ESRI's ArcGIS Viewer for Flex, version 2.4, which uses the Adobe Flex software development kit. The server computer uses the Windows Server 2008 operating system and Internet Information Services (IIS) 7, and data are stored in Microsoft SQL Server 2008. ESRI's ArcGIS for Server 10 Standard edition, using the Microsoft.NET framework 3.5.1, is used to manage GIS services on the host machine. All maps and data were created and edited using ESRI's ArcGIS for Desktop 10.

Topographical Map of the District of Columbia

Official documentation.

Rob Shepard

The following contains information regarding the creation and accuracy of the primary basemap for Civil War Washington.

The original image was obtained from Library of Congress Photoduplication Service, via DVD. The scanned original map as provided by Library of Congress contains misalignment errors and creases that affect spatial accuracy. The image was split into multiple components and mosaicked into a single raster dataset (TIFF image). The individual components and their mathematical transformations are detailed below, with their relative geographic locations included. Image components and .txt files of the transformations will be available for download in the future.

Projection:

    Web Mercator (Auxiliary Sphere)

    World Geodetic System 1984

    EPSG 3857

Raster index and details:
    Boschke001.TIF (Georgetown and Downtown DC)
  • Spline Transformation
  • RMS Error: 0.00001
  • 135 Control Points
  • Georeferencing Source Information:
  • Washington West 3.75 Min CIR DOQ file, SE Quadrant. (USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science [EROS] Center).
  • Acquisition Date: 1994/03/17. Submitting Agency: Western Mapping Center.
  • Photo Source(s): NAPP 7700 4
  • Earth Explorer, United States Geological Survey
    Boschke002.TIF (Downtown Washington, DC)
  • Adjust Transformation
  • RMS Error: 0.00000
  • 181 Control Points
  • Georeferencing Source Information:
  • Washington West 3.75 Min CIR DOQ file, SE Quadrant. (USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science [EROS] Center).
  • Acquisition Date: 1994/03/17. Submitting Agency: Western Mapping Center.
  • Photo Source(s): NAPP 7700 4
  • Earth Explorer, United States Geological Survey
    Boschke003e.TIF -[Boschke 003e.tif, WW_Trans.tif] (Georgetown, SW Washington, DC)
  • Adjust Transformation
  • RMS Error: 0.00000
  • 70 Control Points
  • Georeferencing Source Information:
  • Washington West 3.75 Min CIR DOQ file, SE Quadrant. (USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science [EROS] Center).
  • Acquisition Date: 1994/03/17. Submitting Agency: Western Mapping Center.
    • Photo Source(s): NAPP 7700 4
  • Earth Explorer, United States Geological Survey
    Boschke004.TIF -(Potomac River, SW Washington Quadrant.)
  • 2nd order polynomial transformation
  • RMS Error: 9.33670 [Comment: Excessive curvature near the top of image led to high RMS error]
  • 29 control points, documented at W:\Washington_witt\Rob\004_ControlPts.txt
  • Georeferencing Source Information:
  • Washington West 3.75 Min CIR DOQ file, SE Quadrant. (USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science [EROS] Center).
  • Acquisition Date: 1994/03/17. Submitting Agency: Western Mapping Center.
  • Photo Source(s): NAPP 7700 4
  • Earth Explorer, United States Geological Survey
    BOSNEWAS.tif (East Washington, DC)
  • 2nd order polynomial transformation
  • RMS Error: 0.59387
  • 10 control points
  • Georeferencing Source Information:
  • US Bureau of the Census, 2010 TIGER/Line Shapefile; centerline file
    Boschke006.tif (Alexandria)
  • NOTE: Alexandria city grid has been generalized; could not be rectified to fit current street network. Some street names out of order. Original cartographer must not have surveyed Alexandria properly; only coastline seems to match.
  • 3rd order polynomial transformation.
  • RMS Error: 1.52366
  • 13 control points
  • Georeferencing source information:
  • Alexandria NE 3.75 Min CIR DOQ file, SE Quadrant. (USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science [EROS] Center).
  • Acquisition Date: 1994/03/17. Submitting Agency: Western Mapping Center.
  • Photo Source(s): NAPP 7700 4
  • Earth Explorer, United States Geological Survey
    Boschke007.tif (Southeast District of Columbia)
  • 3rd order polynomial transformation.
  • RMS Error: 3.68788
  • 17 control points
  • Georeferencing source information:
  • Alexandria NE 3.75 Min CIR DOQ file, SE Quadrant. (USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science [EROS] Center).
  • Acquisition Date: 1994/03/17. Submitting Agency: Western Mapping Center.
  • Photo Source(s): NAPP 7700 4
  • Earth Explorer, United States Geological Survey
    Boschke008.tif (Southeast District of Columbia II)
  • 2nd order polynomial transformation.
  • RMS Error: 7.76598
  • 12 control points, documented at W:\Washington_witt\Rob\008ControlPts.txt
  • Georeferencing source information:
  • Alexandria NE 3.75 Min CIR DOQ file, SE Quadrant. (USGS Earth Resources Observation & Science [EROS] Center).
  • Acquisition Date: 1994/03/17. Submitting Agency: Western Mapping Center.
  • Photo Source(s): NAPP 7700 4
  • Earth Explorer, United States Geological Survey
Background Images [Not explicitly designed to be spatially accurate due to limited locations for control points]:
    BACKWAS1.tif (Northern Edges)
  • 3rd order polynomial transformation.
  • RMS Error: 12.74091
  • 24 control points
    BACKWAS2.tif (Southwest Edges)
  • 1st order polynomial transformation
  • RMS Error: 42.38921 (Did not split this section into pieces due to absence of control point opportunities [mapped area left blank for title, details])
  • 14 control points