How to locate a Local Historical place

[kd7ost]

This thread is for discussion for "History", How to locate a Local Historical place.
The working thread is located here.

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showthread.php?t=687319

Dan

[Airboatflyingshp]

Kd7 ...I would urge all your flying observer's to remember timing for their sorties...........
first on the day ........the direction and angle of light can throw small changes in relief or vegetation into surprising contrast.

In terms of changes in the climate long dry spells can show up patterns of disturbance under on and under the surface .........aerial archaeology surveying -standard practice, the first flush of growth following a break in a drought can also yield other signatures.

Season - tree cover is obvious but the seasonal patterns of growth can also tell there own stories about the ground beneath .............. if your using IR sensitive film or cameras sudden changes in temp gradient can indicate where mine water enters streams /rivers.. or natural underground waters emerge ............
The contrast is best at the likely surface water extremes the ground-waters usually remaining relatively constant. Seasonal or diurnal.

Simple optical filters polarizing UV and colours can give some amazing results at very low costs............ Ive bought handfuls of 35mm \SLR filters for a few $ equiv because lots of people have offloaded their film cameras and gear for often short lived and sometime inferior digitals. ;)

[kd7ost]

Good advise all around.

In the example I used on the working thread I'm going to go late in the year. Not just because summer time is busy at my day job, but because the snow on Juniper Mountain will be melted and the river water level will be low. If it's low enough I'll be able to drive across the ford and get a good deal of exploring in on both sides of the canyons. I intend to make at least a two overnight stay of it out there the first time around. I'll take a lot of pictures, early morning and late afternoon as well as midday. That should give me enough time to cover a fair amount of ground and get a general overall feel for the place. Then if I see area’s that I would like to dig further into, I can go back and focus more attention and resources on that spot.

Thanks for the great input. I agree with you 100 percent.

Dan

[Bill Harris]

Yes, the angle and direction of the lighting is important, as is presence and absense of vegetation. Although the magority of my AP is technical and construction-related, I try to get out often and photograph old homeplaces and towns.

--Bill

[wattnoise]

Some info is better than others on the web... Best bet is to corroborate information from 2 or 3 different sources with credentials... Don't just use Wikipedia exclusively for example... One that is good is a project using the US census... The link below is a compilation done a few years ago that is useful to me and the historian of the museum I work at for a field project we're planning in the fall... You can use the info in the header of the text to request your own research for genealogical and historical reference...

http://www.rootsweb.com/~cenfiles/az/pima/1880/ed01/index/indx02.txt

Kevin

[Airboatflyingshp]

Yep watch out for wiki it depends who last edited it they might be wrong.....the more specialist the area your looking at the more you can run into problems......... .old maps surface and Geological, surveys, photos, drawings and word of mouth can all give you clues .......... reading the environment is incredible mix of dynamic and constant - the trick is to approach it with eyes open and your mind even more open but forearmed with possible clues.

[kd7ost]

Some info is better than others on the web... Best bet is to corroborate information from 2 or 3 different sources with credentials... Don't just use Wikipedia exclusively for example... One that is good is a project using the US census... The link below is a compilation done a few years ago that is useful to me and the historian of the museum I work at for a field project we're planning in the fall... You can use the info in the header of the text to request your own research for genealogical and historical reference...

http://www.rootsweb.com/~cenfiles/az/pima/1880/ed01/index/indx02.txt

Kevin

Kevin,

I had luck with the link after I chaanged it to this.

http://www.rootsweb.com/

Dan