Introduction
This project digitally maps the locations of ski resorts/locations in Montreal, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine using the 1948 Boston Globe ski map of northern New England and Canada from AllMaps and seeing if they still exist today. The ski resorts that are still around today are indicated with markers and popups that appear to tell the viewer more about the resort. The purpose of the project is to attempt to find a pattern about why certain resorts might have remained successful.
Sources
Again, this project used the 1948 Boston Globe ski map of northern New England and Canada from the AllMaps source that was given to us for the midterm. Fortunately, the photo was already in IIIF so it didn’t require formatting. I also used Google Maps to get data like address, latitude and longitude, and rating. This data needed to be formatted in this Google Sheet so that it was easier for information to be displayed in popups. Lastly, I used google to find images for each location.
Process
The first thing I did was mask the photo to cut out extra items in the photo like the header. Then I Georeferenced the map with roughly 25 points. I started with the borders of each state, then natural landmarks like mountain ranges and rivers, then big cities, and finally smaller cities. Because the original map had so many resorts on it, I chose to only analyze locations that had three or more icons (from the legend) in a cluster. I did this to save time but also because in theory, the places that were the biggest are the most likely to be around today. After I found each resort, I put it into a Google Sheet to gather information on each location. This information would be put into the map popups. I then did some stylistic changes to the map and added an app that should let you look up the resort while still on the map. My embedded map can be seen below.
Presentation: To the right is my imbedded project. My presentation decisions were relatively simple. On the map, I changed the base layer to topographical for more detail on the mountain ranges when you zoom in. I also changed the colors on the map so that there is more contrast between the map and the image. Imbedding my map was the easiest way for people to understand my project while reading the project description and writeup.
*note: popular ski resorts like Killington Resort in Vermont wasn’t established until 1958 and the resort near Hanover, New Hampshire, is the only 3-icon resort to no longer be around.
Significance
The project reveals that resorts that have prevailed have, quite obviously, been the ones near or on mountain ranges. More strikingly, however, the every resort from 1948 that is around today was labeled with jumps, open trails, and a ski school. This suggests that skiers enjoy a range of activities to do while skiing, and having a ski school is a great way to retain members.
At its core, this project relates to Digital Arts and Humanities because it turns an old piece of information into an interactive component. Moreover, it compares old and new that helps our understanding of the history and success of ski resorts. If this project was done on a wider scale, I’m sure there would be much more information that could lead us to a nuanced conclusion. Especially if we compare ski maps from different decades.
Twenty Twenty-Five
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