Pancakes & Silver

Historical Map Reading, Data Extraction, and 3D Visualization

Introduction


Whether you're a cartographic savant or not, reading a mining map is no small feat. Like a bee to honey, their inherent beauty draws in even the most inexperienced map readers but the technical details can quickly feel overwhelming.

With nearly 1500 mining maps and views in our collections here at Stanford University Libraries, we had a strong desire to break down these barriers and place these maps on an easily understandable pedestal where they belong.

The following story seeks to highlight the history and data buried within maps and views of the Comstock Lode, a significant lode of silver ore discovered in Virginia City, Nevada in 1859. We will provide with you a detailed reason for selecting this particular lode at the end of the story but in short, it gave focus to what follows. We also encourage you to visit our online exhibit:

Here you will be able to discover the full range of the mining maps and views held in our collections.

Following a brief explanation for its name (Comstock Lode), we will look at four maps in chronological order that we believe provide a broad sense of mining maps and views. As librarians, we love fun facts and making connections and have taken the liberty of digging holes for you. We will then demonstrate how to extract data from these mining maps and views in order to turn these pieces of paper into digital three-dimensional (3D) models.

So without further ado, hop into our mine cart and enjoy the ride!

Behind the Name


Henry Comstock,  onlinenevada.org 

In 1859, the first major lode of silver ore in the United States was discovered near Virginia City, Nevada. Located under Mount Davidson, the lode would go on to be named after the quirky American miner, Henry "Pancake" Comstock, and incited a silver rush that overtook Virginia City and nearby Gold Hill.

Why the nickname Pancake? Henry Comstock found bread hard to make and instead chose to sustain himself on pancakes.

Mining Maps & Views


Data Extraction


Data Visualization


Cool, But Why?


Conclusion


As promised, we want to end with an explanation for why we chose this particular lode and share with you a delightful full-circle moment we were able experience.

Each year a group of unabashed map nerds conglomerate at a designated meeting place around the country. We are called the Western Association of Map Libraries or in all its acronymic glory, WAML.

While the group is primarily comprised of map and GIS librarians, it is an association open to the public and we can attest to it being a group of folksy, welcoming humans. To learn more about WAML, visit our website:

The 2019 conference was held at the University of Nevada-Reno, just about a half hour north of Virginia City, Nevada; the meeting's proximity to the site of the renowned Comstock Lode was a phanerite begging to be mined, if you ask us.

Following two days of presentations on a wide variety of mapping and GIS topics, we ended the conference with a tour of Virginia City and needless to say, what we found at the  Way It Was Museum  really sent us over the edge, viewable below:

We sincerely thank you for enjoying this story with us. When we decided to pursue this topic for presentation, we thought it was a good idea. Now having worked on it periodically for two months, we think it's a really good idea. The content related to mining maps and views has proven to be endless and while we aimed to cover our bases, there is undoubtedly much more left to be researched.

We again invite you to further discover this topic by viewing our Stanford University Spotlight Exhibit:

The Actual Conclusion

As with any cool, flashy project, there are the people behind the scenes actually making it all possible and we thank you:

Lead author and creator

Andria Olson

Contributing author

Julie Sweetkind-Singer

Geospatial Yoda who answered every question under the surface

David Medeiros

Steward of maps

David Rumsey Map Center (DRMC)

Digital accessibility to maps

Digital Library Systems & Services (DLSS)

High-resolution images of maps

Digital Production Group (DPG)

Information for maps

Metadata Department

Map preservation

Preservation Department

Digital image archive

Stanford Digital Repository (SDR)

Henry Comstock,  onlinenevada.org