MapStory Traces the Development of the United States

Interested in tracing the development of everything from urban bike lanes to national parks to rocket test sites?

1 minute read

October 31, 2014, 12:00 PM PDT

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Roosevelt Arch

Zack Frank / Shutterstock

Kriston Capps tips readers off to the MapStory app, which, according to Capps, "aims to give users the means to map the development of every municipality on the planet." MapStory accomplishes that laudable goal by "[collating] city records that span centuries, colonies, wars, and states…."

MapStory is funded by an OpenGov grant from the Sunlight Foundation, and "users are taking MapStory beyond its initial goals of mapping the states of New York and also California, where they've collected data for a whole mess of that state's cities."

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