Saturday, June 25, 2016

The Illustrated Interactive Iron Works Map


The National Park Service website has a wonderful illustrated map of the Saugus Iron Works in Massachusetts. The Saugus lron Works was the first successful, integrated iron works in the New World.

The illustrated map has been made interactive using the Leaflet mapping platform. It was well worth the effort as you can use the interactive map controls to zoom into the beautiful detail in this pictorial map. Check-out the individual trees, people and the geese & wading birds in the river.

It is a shame there in no option to turn off the map labels. The labels are obviously important to aide navigation but you could appreciate the artwork more without them. Having gone to the trouble of creating the interactive map tiles from the pictorial map the next step might be to add a little information to the map, It would be an easy enough job to make the building's interactive. This interactivity could then open pop-up windows or could add information to another page element outside of the map.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

This is an excellent map of the blast furnace, forge, slitting mill, and charging bridge. The building whose roof is at the bottom center of the picture is the storage area for finished products that were to be shipped by river to the Atlantic Ocean. Not shown is the location of Joseph Jenks foundry where a variety of finished goods (saw blades, pins, scythes, hammers, nails, and fish hooks) were made. This site was left of and below the slag pile. The omission of this is understandable because the Jenks shop was not reconstructed.

I strongly recommend visiting this site to get an impression of how impressive Hammersmith was during its operation. The rangers are very informative and the reconstruction is amazing.

I did not use the interactive features because I was too lazy to figure it out.