In the Utah desert, a GPS is no substitute for common sense

August 10, 2008

A cardinal rule of driving the western U.S. is this: Don’t head off through the mountains or desert without knowing how you’re going to get back, or get to the next smattering of civilization.

Why? Old friend Peter B. Pope once trekked a chunk of Wyoming with another friend, and they had a bit of an altitude sickness scare. After three days above 9,000 feet, they realized they needed to get down, and that was a problem — miles of hiking. Help?

They picked that area of Wyoming to hike because the USGS topographical map showed no roads at all in that section. Real adventure territory. The only way to get help was to get out, and what they needed, really, was just to get out.

Or, consider the sign that used to greet travelers leaving Green River, Utah, going west on U.S. Highway 50: “No services for next 140 miles.” I once stopped to help a guy who had run out of gas 42 miles into that stretch. He confessed he’d seen the sign, but thought a bit less than a quarter-tank of gas in his old gas guzzler would do it. It hadn’t occurred to him it also meant no food or water, or towns, or telephones (I wonder if that road has cell coverage now). He was thinking of walking back for gas. 42 miles. It was well over 100°. I’m sure the highway patrol could have found him before he died.

Maps help. A compass is good. Having the skills of a First Class Boy Scout to use the map and compass together also benefits travelers.

If you have a compass, you still need a map; if you have a GPS, you still need to know whether the roads are passable. In short, you need to know where you’re going, how to get there, and whether you have the equipment to make the trip.

Comes this story from the Associated Press, in USA Today, about a “convoy” of people who thought they’d use a GPS to navigate the back country from Bryce Canyon National Park to the Grand Canyon. The only appropriate response is the one Will Smith’s character gave the woman whose husband had been killed so his skin could be used as a disguise by a giant interstellar cockroach in “Men In Black.” He said: “I mean . . . damn!”

Old friend, John Hollenhorst’s story of the incident on KSL-TV (Channel 5) carries pictures and maps that show just how foolish is the assumption that “a GPS and a cell phone are all they need to get by.”

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “ksl.com – Deputies rescue tourists lo…“, posted with vodpod

(KSL ought to let Hollenhorst play the expert on this story — he’s an Eagle Scout and once was an accomplished outdoorsman himself, perhaps still is.)

The group took off heading south from Grosvenor Arch, a natural arch south of the National Geographic-named Kodachrome Basin State Park. To get to Kodachrome Basin, you travel ten miles on unpaved roads. Going south out of Kodachrome Basin to Grosvenor Arch, you find the roads get less well-maintained. The maps show nothing but dirt roads, though some maps show a rather major dirt road that connects with Highway U.S. 89 east of Kanab, Utah, on the way to Page, Arizona. Most highway maps probably don’t convey the reality of the situation. This is the landscape you find:

White Cliffs in the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument (BLM photo)

White Cliffs in the Grand Staircase/Escalante National Monument (BLM photo)

It’s not exactly friendly to non-four-wheel-drive vehicles. It’s not friendly to any vehicle.

You don’t see a lot of roads in the 50 or 70 miles you can see, either. Roads that go through that area are unpaved, often unauthorized, and shouldn’t be on any map. Hollenhorst painted the scene:

The Californians ventured into one of the roughest and most remote landscapes in the United States. They believed their GPS unit would lead them back to a paved highway. They wound up desperately calling relatives in California in the middle of the night.

Yes, Virginia — and New York, and California — there really are places like that in America.

One relative, Esther Lahiji, said, “They ran out of gas and they lost their way. It was dark at night. And thank God they could charge their cell phones in their cars.”

The convoy of four vehicles, containing 13 adults and 10 children, had visited Bryce Canyon and Kodachrome Basin. But it left pavement to visit Grosvenor Arch. Using a GPS unit, they tried to reconnect to a paved road far to the south. But they got lost in a network of dirt roads, which Kane County Sheriff Lamont Smith says often lead nowhere.

“Those little spurs, those little dirt sandy spurs go out to the cliffs and dead-end,” he said.

With one vehicle stuck in sand and others running out of gas, they couldn’t go back. And heat was an issue, especially for the children.

The group stumbled into an area with cell phone coverage skipping from a distant tower — an area of accidental coverage (weather can change such coverage patterns — they are hit and miss, at best). They were able to phone for help.

After they called for help by cell phone, rescuers delivered food, water and gasoline and escorted them out.

Sheriff Smith says tourists just shouldn’t rely on a GPS unit in such rugged country.

“If you go off the pavement, you either need to ask the locals where the road goes or which roads to take, or else just stay on the paved roads, because a lot of these roads just don’t go anywhere,” he said.

Need we say it? Out there, one may not find locals to talk to. Last time Kathryn and I visited Kodachrome Basin, there were no other parties camping there — in August, at the height of the tourist season. South of the park? Are you serious? (We didn’t visit Kodachrome this summer.)

From Grosvenor Arch, to get to the Grand Canyon, go north back to Utah State Road 12; it’s about 20 miles. Then go east, through Tropic, Utah, and past the entrance to Bryce Canyon National Park to U.S. Highway 89 (about 30 miles). Highway 89 south to Kanab is another of the most spectacular drives in America, through miles and miles of millions of years of petrified sand dunes — white, red, ochre, maroon, purple and chocolate cliffs, juniper-pinyon desert, pink sands, green cottonwoods, and nice paved roads.

You can stop for coffee in Kanab, in the afternoon at a book/outdoors outfitter/coffee shop, Willow Canyon Outdoor (we stopped three different days — it’s a great cup of good coffee in an area more than 200 miles from the nearest Starbucks; which Starbucks may have the New York Times, Willow Canyon will have the latest High Country News to read; we picked up a couple of CDs of Beethoven for the drive, and had I had more sense, I could have gotten some good trekking poles there).

From Willow Canyon Outdoor, it’s about 40 miles to where that dirt road from Bryce Canyon enters U.S 89, if you survive the drive. It’ll take you two to three hours to make the drive and get coffeed up on paved road if you take the long way — this group from California spent several times that amount of time, and risked their lives.

Paved roads, great scenery, good coffee, nice drive, or you can eat dust and threaten your life. You choose.

Resources:

7 Comments | Eagle Scout, History, Maps, Natural resources, Technology, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Geography hidden in plain sight

June 18, 2008

Strange Maps features federally-owned lands. Those of us who grew up in the west tramping those federal lands, and those of us who worked policy for those lands rarely think they should be listed as “strange” maps. Beautiful land maps, perhaps. God’s Country. It’s funny others regard it as so strange.

But we get clues. In comments at Strange Maps I noted a corporate meeting where I was chastised and ostracized for making a simple statement of fact about the ownership of lands in the west. Other than we veterans of the Sagebrush Rebellion (on all sides), ranchers, miners, and members of the Sierra Club, Wilderness Society, National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) [Barry Tindall? Are you still out there?], National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), and enrolled tribal members, who pays attention to that stuff?

Too few in government pay enough attention. Fewer people outside government pay attention, especially if they don’t live in states in which the federal lands reside.

Public lands are all around us, yet we don’t see them as anything much different from any other land. Too often we don’t even see them for the resources they are. It’s as if we had a treasure of diamonds, rubies and gold, and we put it on display, and no one could see it.

For example, there was a major decision in federal district court on an issue of federalism last Friday — did you hear of it in your local newspaper, or on your local television or radio news? Nor are most people familiar with the move to amend the 1872 Mining Act, nor could most Americans describe for you what the 1872 Mining Act is or why it’s worth billions of dollars annually to the federal government, state governments, and mining corporations.

Strange Maps showed only the amount of land in federal hands in each state. Below is a map that shows where are the actual federal holdings, from the online National Atlas (nationalatlas.gov) — a map of federal lands and Indian Reservations. (A .gif preview is below; below that is a link to a .pdf file you can download.) The light green is National Forest land; the yellow is Bureau of Land Management land. The red plots are Indian reservations. Click on the map for the enlargement, you can see that Nevada, for example, has just thin threads of private lands (in white), mostly along U.S. Highway 50, and around Las Vegas.

All Federal Lands and Indian Reservations; NationalAtlas.gov, now archived at USGS

All Federal Lands and Indian Reservations; NationalAtlas.gov, now archived at USGS

 

 

Flip the pages of most geography texts, however, and you’ll find little clue of the role federal lands play in modern America, let alone the historical roles played.

History?

Sure. Notice that most of the public lands held today are in 13 western states, generally the last states allowed into the union (not exactly; Oklahoma is a 20th century admission — but it has Indian reservations; read on). Outside the 13 original colonies, which became the 13 original states, and Vermont (#14), all the land in the U.S. was held by the federal government at one time. Much of the territory between the 13 original states and the Mississippi was ceded to the U.S. by Britain in the Treaty of Paris, which ended the American Revolution. Americans thought the land useful for farming, chiefly, so the intention was to devise the lands to private holders. To that end the various Northwest Ordinances (e.g., 1785, 1786, 1787 and later) established systems to sell off the lands into private hands.

Disposal of the lands required the creation of a bureau to do the job. The General Land Office was created in 1812, and remained part of the federal government until it was folded into the new Bureau of Land Management in 1946.

That some of the lands might have national value, and should be held in federal title, did not surface as a complete idea until the Progressive Era, with the emphasis on land stewardship, under Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and their successors. Even then, the general idea was to get most of the lands into private ownership. Roosevelt worked to preserve the most scenic and most unique lands.

Beginning with the Northwest Ordinances, the federal government set aside two sections in every township for the benefit of education. Local governments sold the tracts and put the money to school construction, or put the schools on those sections. Some of the tracts in the far western states are still there, unsold and providing no benefits to the schools. In some cases this is because the tracts are stuck inside federally-held tracts, in National Forests, in National Parks. Texas dedicated some of its state lands to provide funding for the University of Texas. Fortunately, these tracts happened to be on a pool of oil. When oil development took off, Texas’s university systems benefited (the Texas A&M System got a third of the rights along the way).

Poster advertising lands in Nebraska and Iowa

Development of the Transcontinental Railroad was financed by massive grants of land to the railroad companies. Even today the fortunes of the old Burlington Northern Railroad (now BNSF) are swelled by coal on land granted to the original companies building the rails, land the company has held for all these years. The thin line of private land across northern Nevada originally was the route of the Central Pacific Railroad — now it is approximately the route of U.S. Highway 50, “America’s Loneliest Highway.”

President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act on May 20, 1862. Under the Act, any American could lay claim to public lands for a small fee, and if he could live on the land for five years, title was vested in that citizen. This explanation comes from a lesson plan at the National Archives:

The new law established a three-fold homestead acquisition process: filing an application, improving the land, and filing for deed of title. Any U.S. citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. Government could file an application and lay claim to 160 acres of surveyed Government land. For the next 5 years, the homesteader had to live on the land and improve it by building a 12-by-14 dwelling and growing crops. After 5 years, the homesteader could file for his patent (or deed of title) by submitting proof of residency and the required improvements to a local land office.

When I was a child in southern Idaho, customers at my parents’ furniture store included many people who were still trying to make a go of things on homesteads north of Burley, Idaho, on “the North Side.” Much of the land granted this way could not support a family, and the failure rate of these homesteads in the 1950s and 1960s was probably more than 50 percent (I’m swagging the figure — if you have better statistics, send them along).

Overall, the Homestead Act shaped America’s character as a home for entrepreneurs:

By 1934, over 1.6 million homestead applications were processed and more than 270 million acres—10 percent of all U.S. lands—passed into the hands of individuals. The passage of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 repealed the Homestead Act in the 48 contiguous states, but it did grant a ten-year extension on claims in Alaska.

Much of the land that open for homesteading was desert, unsuitable for farming. It was available for grazing cows and sheep, though, and much of it was overgrazed. (Grazing alone wouldn’t meet the homestead requirements.) It was not until the 1970s that people outnumbered sheep in Utah, for example. In the first three decades of the 20th century enormous flocks of sheep grazed much of what is now considered Utah’s western desert territory, flocks of thousands of sheep, or tens of thousands.

These lands, too arid for farming, too hilly for much of anything else, too far away from settlements for other commerce, eventually formed the core of lands held by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the Department of Interior. BLM manages 264 million acres of land, far and away the biggest land management agency in the federal government. Much of the land was severely overgrazed by 1930, and after the harsh lessons of the Dustbowl, Congress tried to rope in grazing and set it up in a rational scheme in the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934, one of the lesser noted chunks of the New Deal era.

The major federal land management agencies today include the Department of Interior’s BLM, National Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and to a lesser and more complicated degree, the Bureau of Indian Affairs; the Department of Agriculture’s National Forest Service; and the Department of Defense, especially in the western public lands states (think Nevada gunnery range, Skull Valley and Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah, and Area 51).

Each area of land management policy is controversial to some degree, but even these controversies rarely rise to the level of public acknowledgment. The latest starlet’s sexcapades will grab headlines away from the major effort to overhaul mining law, for example. In the 1980s, Alaska voted on a proposal to secede from the union, but the issue barely got three paragraphs in the Washington Post or New York Times, two of the newspapers that are generally very good in covering such issues. This post barely scratches the surface of these issues.

(Digression: I first encountered Molly Ivins when she reported for the NY Times out of the Denver bureau; as a Scout I had hiked and traveled much of Utah and the west; as a Senate staffer to a western senator, I was intimately familiar with most of the land in Utah especially. Ivins wrote a story on a protection issue on a chunk of land and a formation I’d not been familiar with, and in sparring with her about the article, it became very clear that she had pulled out sources we didn’t know about, and that she knew the stuff about as well as we did. Anyone who bothers to give a damn about western lands can earn my respect with such careful research.)

As a side note, Strange Maps suggested that the District of Columbia was all federal lands, but most of the District has been devised into private property, and commenters noted that. Here is a map of the District showing its federally-maintained lands.

District of Columbia and Federal Lands; NationalAtlas.gov (now at USGS)

District of Columbia and Federal Lands; NationalAtlas.gov (now at USGS)

Other resources:

Other related posts at the Bathtub:

6 Comments | Environmental protection, Federalism, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Maps, Native Americans, Natural history, Natural resources, Politics, Science, Theodore Roosevelt | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Baltimore’s orgy of cartography and geography

March 22, 2008

The ad says “Come visit Utopia in Baltimore.” With an orgy of maps like that planned, it should be a Utopia for somebody: Geographers, cartographers, historians, and anyone interested in travel.

Baltimore’s Walters Art Museum hosts an outstanding exhibit of world-changing maps through June 8, a Festival of Maps; the entire town appears to have gone ga-ga on the idea. Baltimore will be Map Central for a few weeks, at least.

The Baltimore Sun (one of the truly great newspapers in America) described some of the cartographic gems on display:

Among the treasures is a huge and beautiful map of the fossil-embedded geological strata that underlie England and Wales. That masterpiece, published in 1815 by a pioneering geologist named William Smith, offered evidence used to support Darwin’s theory of evolution and set the stage for creation-vs.-evolution debates that still rage.

Then there’s the map researched by a doctor named John Snow in the 1850s. It allowed him to trace the source of a cholera outbreak in London to a well used by residents of a single neighborhood.

And there will be charts prepared by geographer Marie Tharp of the Mid-Oceanic Ridge, a mountainous rise in the mid-Atlantic seabed, based on data gathered by American submarines during World War II and later used to provide evidence of how the Earth’s crust has evolved through geological time.

The Smith and Snow maps anchor key events in science, the origin of paleontology and one of the greatest examples of public health sleuthing. To have both of those maps in one exhibition is a great coup for the Walters, and for Baltimore.

The exhibit also features a map of Utopia drawn by Sir Thomas Moore. Other maps were drawn by Benjamin Franklin, J. R. R. Tolkein, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Here’s a video description of one of the more remarkable pieces on view, a map of London, on a glove:

Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.baltimore.org posted with vodpod

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Surely there is material here for the Strange Maps blog.  Here’s a still of the glove, from the collection of The National Archives, UK:

Glove map, from London's 1851 Exposition

Below the fold, a partial list of some of the other exhibits and events planned in and around Baltimore, which will convince you, I hope, that it is indeed an orgy worth getting a ticket to see.

Baltimore remains one of my favorite towns, despite the loss of my Johnny Unitas-led Colts, despite the Orioles’ recent mediocrity; it’s a place of great history, great neighborhoods, and good food. Crabcakes from several sites, dinner at Sabatino’s, maps in the museums. Utopia indeed.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment » | Flag etiquette, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, geology, History, History and art, History museums, Literature, Maps, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Carnival, carnival

February 1, 2008

57th Carnival of the Liberals awaits your viewing at Worldwide Webers.  It features some serious thinking about sex education, among other thought provokers.

156th Carnival of Education pitches the midway at Creating Lifelong Learners. One of the sideshows, Noirlecroi, caught my eye with a post on how to set up a classroom to teach social studies.  Who knew?

4 Comments | Education, Maps, Politics, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Weblogs | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

What’s in a name? A Texas town by any other name . . .

January 12, 2008

. . . would still be a Texas town.

But Texas towns have some of the best names of towns in the U.S. Plus, there are a lot of Texas towns, plus 254 Texas counties.

Freckles Cassie at Political Teen Tidbits has a great list:

texas-road-map-tripinfodotcom.gif

Need to be cheered up?

Happy, Texas 79042
Pep, Texas 79353
Smiley, Texas 78159
Paradise, Texas 76073
Rainbow, Texas 76077
Sweet Home, Texas 77987
Comfort, Texas 78013
Friendship, Texas 76530

Go see the entire list — and maybe add a few of your favorites in the comments. An ambitious geography teacher could make a couple of great exercises out of those lists. “What’s the shortest distance one would have to drive to visit Paris, Italy, Athens and Santa Fe? How many could you visit in the shortest time?”

See updated version, here, with more links.

4 Comments | Geography - Political, History, Maps, Place Names, Texas, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Festival au Desert Essakane! January 10-12, 2008

January 10, 2008

BBC’s internet services carried this slide and sound account of the 2007 Essakane festival in far off Mali; this is one music festival I would really like to attend. Snippets of songs crop up on NPR or PRI (especially The World), and on PBS, and in record stores with really savvy staff — or where Putumayo discs are on sale. Everything I have heard from these festivals is very, very good.

Robert Plant helped make it famous with his 2003 performance. But its fame is relative; it’s famous only among a select group of people — those who have heard the music.

[Alas, Vodpod died, and the video that I had captured via that service seems to appear nowhere else on the web.  If you should find the piece by Paula Dear which the BBC broadcast in 2007, please note it in comments.]

Vodpod videos no longer available. from news.bbc.co.uk posted with vodpod

.

The festival is set for January 10-12 in 2008. Who is playing? Where are news stories? Where are the CDs? Here’s the official website.

Geography teachers, think of the possibilities this festival offers for fun in the classroom! Adam Fisher wrote about it for the New York Times a couple of years ago:

My real aim is Essakane, an obscure desert oasis a half-day’s drive beyond Timbuktu, and the site of what’s billed as the “most remote music festival in the world.” It’s a three-day Afro-pop powwow held by the Tuareg, the traditionally nomadic “blue people” of the Sahara.

It’s a tribe often feared for the banditry of its rebels and respected for the fact that it has never really been conquered. Historically its great power came from its role in the trans-Saharan trade in gold, slaves and salt. Even now, Tuareg caravans make the 15-day journey south from the northern salt mines to Timbuktu on the Niger River. They rest their camels during the day and use the stars to navigate at night. The skin tint of the nomads comes from the indigo dye they use for their turbans and robes, which leaves a permanent stain.

What more exciting stuff do you have in your classroom on the Tuareg? Does it resonate better with your teenagers than this story would?

Read the rest of this entry »

2 Comments | Africa, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Lesson plans, Maps, Music, Travel | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Prehistory and art: Lesson plan material

October 7, 2007

Teachers looking for good interactive graphics on human migration in prehistoric times should take a look at the website of Australia’s Bradshaw Foundation. The map requires an Adobe Flash player, and I cannot embed it here — but go take a look, here. “The Journey of Man” seems tailor made for classroom use, if you have a live internet connection and a projector.

Ancient art is the chief focus of the foundation.

Ancient paintings, the Bradshaw paintings, at the Bradshaw Foundation Examples of some of the most famous cave and rock paintings populate the site, along with many lesser known creations — the eponymous paintings, the Bradshaw group, generally disappear from U.S. versions of world history texts. The Bradshaw Foundation website explains:

The Bradshaw Paintings are incredibly sophisticated, as you will see from the 32 pictures in the Paintings Section, yet they are not recent creations but originate from an unknown past period which some suggest could have been 50,000 years ago. This art form was first recorded by Joseph Bradshaw in 1891, when he was lost on an Kimberley expedition in the north west of Australia. Dr. Andreas Lommel stated on his expedition to the Kimberleys in 1955 that the rock art he referred to as the Bradshaw Paintings may well predate the present Australian Aborigines.

This ancient art carries a story that should intrigue even junior high school students, and it offers examples of archaeological techniques that are critical to determining the ages of undated art in the wild:

According to legend, they were made by birds. It was said that these birds pecked the rocks until their beaks bled, and then created these fine paintings by using a tail feather and their own blood. This art is of such antiquity that no pigment remains on the rock surface, it is impossible to use carbon dating technology. The composition of the original paints cant be determined, and whatever pigments were used have been locked into the rock itself as shades of Mulberry red, and have become impervious to the elements.

Fortuitously, in 1996 Grahame Walsh discovered a Bradshaw Painting partly covered by a fossilised Mud Wasp nest, which scientists have removed and analysed using a new technique of dating, determining it to be 17,000 + years old.

Texas history and geography teachers should note the Bradshaw Foundation’s work on prehistorica art in the Pecos River Valley: “Pecos Experience: Art and archeaology in the lower Pecos.” There is much more here than is found in most Texas history texts — material useful for student projects or good lesson plans.

Painting from Panther Cave, lower Pecos, Texas - Bradshaw Foundation

Leave a Comment » | Archaeology, Art, Geography - Physical, History and art, History images, Lesson plans, Maps, Prehistory, Technology in the classroom, TEKS, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas earthquake!

September 23, 2007

Epicenter of Texas earthquake

Really. A Texas earthquake. September 15, 2007.

Missed it? Well, it was at the dinner hour, 06:16:42 PM (CDT). You may have thought it was Bubba’s great sauce for the barbecue, or the raspberry in the iced tea.

US Geological Survey provides a state-by-state listing of latest earthquakes. Texas is not a particularly active zone — but there are quakes, even here.

This last one, just over a week ago, was a 2.7 on the Richter scale, too weak to merit much news coverage even in the flatlands. It shook Milam County and surprised people there, but it didn’t do much damage:

In terms of destruction, the earthquake was hardly significant.

Emergency responders said they knew of only one report of damage: A teapot fell off of a woman’s stove.

In California, people probably wouldn’t have even noticed the tremor. But this earthquake happened in the Lone Star State and left Brazos Valley residents baffled.

“You just don’t expect your house to shake,” said Burleson County resident Karen Bolt. She was in her trailer home cleaning dishes when the temblor began.

USGS provides more details than you can use:

Magnitude 2.7
Date-Time
  • Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 23:16:42 (UTC) – Coordinated Universal Time
  • Saturday, September 15, 2007 at 06:16:42 PM local time at epicenter

    • Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
    Location 30.74N 96.74W
    Depth 5.0 kilometers
    Region CENTRAL TEXAS
    Distances 35 km (20 miles) W of Bryan, Texas
    65 km (40 miles) ENE of Taylor, Texas
    110 km (70 miles) ENE of AUSTIN, Texas
    170 km (105 miles) NW of Houston, Texas
    Location Uncertainty Error estimate: horizontal +/- 16.2 km; depth fixed by location program
    Parameters Nst=4, Nph=4, Dmin=123.3 km, Rmss=1.25 sec, Erho=16.2 km, Erzz=0 km, Gp=130.4 degrees
    Source USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
    Remarks Felt in the Caldwell-Rockdale area.
    Event ID ushhc

    Still, Texans should be relieved it was a small one. The largest recorded Texas earthquake was in 1931, with an epicenter near Valentine. At 5.7 magnitude and VII intensity, it nearly destroyed the little town of Valentine.

    In terms of magnitude and damage, this is the largest earthquake known to have occurred in Texas. The most severe damage was reported at Valentine, where all buildings except wood-frame houses were damaged severely and all brick chimneys toppled or were damaged. The schoolhouse, which consisted of one section of concrete blocks and another section of bricks, was damaged so badly that it had to be rebuilt. Small cracks formed in the schoolhouse yard. Some walls collapsed in adobe buildings, and ceilings and partitions were damaged in wood-frame structures. Some concrete and brick walls were cracked severely. One low wall, reinforced with concrete, was broken and thrown down. Tombstones in a local cemetery were rotated. Damage to property was reported from widely scattered points in Brewster, Jeff Davis, Culberson, and Presidio Counties. Landslides occurred in the Van Horn Mountaiins, southwest of Lobo; in the Chisos Mountains, in the area of Big Bend; and farther northwest, near Pilares and Porvenir. Landslides also occurred in the Guadalupe Mountains, near Carlsbad, New Mexico, and slides of rock and dirt were reported near Picacho, New Mexico. Well water and springs were muddied throughout the area. Also felt in parts of Oklahoma, New Mexico, and in Chihauhua and Coahuila, Mexico.

    Texas history courses could make some use of these data, for map reading exercises, and for general geography about the state. Click on the map below, the isoseismal map of the 1931 Valentine, Texas quake, and geography teachers will begin to dream of warm-up exercises right away.

    Isoseismal map of 1931 earthquake near Valentine, Texas

    USGS offers a wealth of information on Texas’ geology and geography — stream flow information, drought information — collected in one spot for each state in a “Science in your backyard” feature.

    Pick your state, pick your topic, and go.

    3 Comments | Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, History, Images, Maps, Natural history, Natural resources, Science, Technology in the classroom, Texas, Texas history | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Historic maps: Florida and the Gulf of Mexico

    September 21, 2007

    Go to the University of Florida Smathers Library site, and admire the beauty of these old maps of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. (While I think fair use would cover it, I’m holding back on posting an image until copyright permission comes through — you’re licensed to use them in the classroom, however.)

    What else would you expect from a library named after Sen. George A. Smathers, who was part of that legendary 1950 Senate campaign in Florida?

    The maps featured on the first page include Spanish, Dutch, English, Belgian, French and Italian maps of the early explorers, suitable certainly for Texas history courses, and also for Florida, Louisiana and U.S. history units on European exploration.

    This site is quite Florida-centric, but it’s links also provide some interesting and valuable resources, such as the link to satellite imagery of the areas, like the NOAA map, below.

    NOAA map of ocean water temperatures around Florida, satellite image

    Tip of the old scrub brush to A Cracker Boy Looks at Florida

    Leave a Comment » | DBQ sources, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Historic documents, History, History and art, History images, Maps, Texas | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Toad mapping – another cool tool

    August 16, 2007

    What amphibians can be found in your local biome? Great Plains toad, Bufo cognatusWhat is the range of a particular amphibian, say the Great Plains toad? What does that toad look like? How does it sing?

    hear call (10337.1K WAV file)

    Great source to supplement geography lessons: Amphibiaweb, a special project at the University of California – Berkeley.

    Quite student friendly — get to the world map, click on your continent (ooh! kids gotta know what continent they’re on! see social studies TEKS, World geography 4.C, U.S. history 8, World history 11), click on your country, if you’re in the U.S., click on your state. Photos, maps of the range, scientific names, sound recordings of their calls, description, conservation status.

    Read the rest of this entry »

    4 Comments | Lesson plans, Maps, Natural history, On-line education, On-line learning, Technology in the classroom, TEKS, Texas | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Toldja

    August 8, 2007

    Remember the earlier post on this?

    Flight patters, from Aaron Koblin Design|Media Arts

    Robert Krulwich at ABC thought it was neat, too — see this video, and you can see the artist who created the maps. Does this mean there will be more?

    1 Comment | Brain learning, Creativity, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Maps, Presentations, Technology, Transportation | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    BBC animation: The Western Front, World War I

    July 30, 2007

    Western Front of World War I, from BBC animation

    Here’s another map animation from the BBC that helps people visualize the stalemate nature of the Western Front of World War I.

    If this animation is available in any form for purchase from the BBC for classroom use, I haven’t found it. I do wish the BBC would do a DVD or CD compilation of these animations and make it available at very low cost to teachers (high costs mean schools buy only one copy, which teachers can’t get a chance to see, and consequently won’t integrate into their lesson plans; paradoxically, a low-priced disk would probably earn BBC more money, and certainly would contribute to much more classroom learning).

    This would be a good link for individual study at home on the internet. A great lecture could be built around it, if one has internet access live in the classroom and a way to project it.

    1 Comment | 1914-1918, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, History video sources, Maps, On-line education, On-line learning, Teaching, Technology, Technology in the classroom, World War I | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Lewis & Clark: Enrichment sources for teachers and students

    July 17, 2007

    David Horsey of Seattle P-I, on the Lewis and Clark expedition

    David Horsey is an editorial writer and cartoonist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer — he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartoons.  In 2005, the 200th anniversary of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, he retraced the path of the explorers from the Continental Divide to the Pacific.  Horsey photographed his journey, wrote about it, and made drawings.

    This is a rich resource for anyone studying the opening of the West, and especially the Lewis and Clark Expedition, exploring the territory included in 1803’s Louisiana Purchase. Let’s hope the Seattle Post-Intelligencer keeps the site available for teachers and students.

    Illustration by David Horsey, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

    Leave a Comment » | 1803, Historic documents, History, Lesson plans, Maps, Travel | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Buy a piece of a National Forest, help fund schools

    July 8, 2007

    I’m trying to figure out how to use this amazing spectrum of maps in class.

    But, one set can do something good for schools:  You can buy a piece of a national forest, and thereby contribute to a fund to help schools.  It’s a bit of a crackpot idea, really — selling off the national forests to provide a minuscule amount of money for schools.  But there may be some gems of land out there that could be used for  .  .  . decreasing global warming by creating a preserve for trees.

    Davey Crockett National Forest, parcels for sale:  This map shows land in Texas for sale.

    Your local National Forest may be represented, too.  Get there before the developers?  Not likely — but you can dream, can’t you?

    Please be warned, though, I find the site a real memory hog.  If you’re running several programs, and you’re memory deficient as I appear to be for this set of maps, be careful.

    Seriously, the site offers a variety of maps of public lands under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management and National Forest Service.  Mineral leasing, oil and gas, coal, and other resources are mapped.  This affects the western public lands states mostly, but it could be a great source for a geography project on energy or mineral or timber resources for the nation.

    What do you think?

    Leave a Comment » | Environmental protection, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, Maps, Public education, Technology, Technology in the classroom, Travel | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

    Maps of lost worlds: Caddoland

    June 29, 2007

    Caddoland collage, UT-Austin, Texas Beyond History (Click on thumbnail for a larger view of this Caddoland Collage)

    Caddos, Anadarkoes, Tawaconies, Southern Delawares — so many Native American tribes disappear from U.S. history books, and from U.S. history. These histories should be better preserved and better taught.

    Texas history texts mention the Caddo Tribe, but largely ignore what must have been a significant cultural empire, if not an empire that left large stone monuments. Teaching this material in Texas history classes frustrates me, and probably others. Student projects on the Caddos are frequently limited in what they cover, generally come up with the same three or four factoids and illustrations.

    The Caddo Tribe lived in an area spanning five modern states, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and eventually Missouri. Here is an interactive map that offers more information and useful photos of Caddoland than I have found in any other source: The Caddo Map Tool.

    Basic map of Caddoland

    This is just an image of the tool — click on the image above and it will link to the actual site. One of the things that excites me about this map is its interactive features, especially the map that carries links to photos that show just what the local environment looks like.

    Read the rest of this entry »

    2 Comments | Archaeology, Geography - Economic, Geography - Physical, Geography - Political, History, Lesson plans, Maps, On-line education, On-line learning, Place Names, Prehistory, Student projects, Teaching, Technology in the classroom, Texas, Texas history, Travel | Permalink
    Posted by Ed Darrell

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