So I’ve been thinking about another long term project, Vermont Historical Markers. There are 245 historic markers in the state. I’ve started creating a spreadsheet with the information Here.
Potential Guidelines: Type - Point Name - {Marker Name} - Historic Marker Category - Tourist Attraction/Historic Site Description:
Year -
External providers
Not sure if there are Google links for these
Lock - 2
Create a corresponding PLA if applicable
Parking - Historic Marker - Marker Name
What do you think? Would anyone like to assist? Thanks in advance for the feedback!
Madcatvt (Mike)
Sounds like a great project – even more fun if you do some BOTG exploration of your lovely state. My inclination would be NOT to include “Historic Marker -” in the Place name. It seems unlikely that someone is going to search for “Historic Marker” but instead for the actual place name, e.g. “Hubbardton Battlefield”. If that might create confusion, then I’d add the “Historic Marker” as a postfix, e.g. “Hubbardton Battlefield Historic Marker”.
Nice to see another project Mike, thank you for your ongoing work here. Any chance you want to do a separate post about your Meetup Presentation on these project works (Maybe in the New England section)?
A couple things, might be nice to include in the header of your google sheet links to the respective forum post, your source of the info, and if you want to do some fancy calculations, stats on progress.
I agree with Robert suffix approach, easier to see in the search results if it is a long name, the Historic Marker or the Hubbardton Battlefield are both searchable, but if the text gets clipped I rather see the Hubbardton part. Also I might do a “Hubbardton Battlefield - Historic Marker” approach but in the end its your project.
I like this idea … and I ran into one of these yesterday when I was prototyping some things in Belvidere VT https://tinyurl.com/GWHenderson
Having recently done a few hundred spreadsheet PLs (from the WAL script) I find its frustrating / inefficient to have to launch WME for each segment or place. (Scripts probably don’t help.)
I wonder if there is a way where these can be plotted as an overlay?
I think it would be a lot easier to go to an area / town … and then just search out the dots where a PP should be … and fill in the blanks.
Some of these may already exist - for the Editor do you want the last editor or who initially created it?
Some of these seem to be more than just a historic marker. For example, the floating bridge and Tunbridge Fair. Should those be area places? If they are already in Waze … do you want a separate historic marker PP?
I concur with other comments on the naming aspects: the most significant part of the name (which someone may search for or view on a list) should be first.
Maybe a faster way to go through this: swap the Latitude and Longitude columns (making Longitude first). Then you can just copy the Lon/Lat and past into WME and get quickly to the location - seems faster than the PL. (And I don’t know why in Waze it is in what seems to be reverse order.)
Is there a source for what you currently have in the sheet? Would the description field be worthy of a brief note about what the place is? The year it was established doesn’t seem like it would be too interesting …
If we have enough historic markers and other interesting places along a route … maybe it could be possible to publish a Waze navigation list of them (something the state could do). I’m thinking along the lines of how Geocaching has a short GCxxxx waypoint code for each cache. Maybe we could create alternate names for places … like:
LC-001 LC-002 etc (Lake Champlain Byway)
MR-001 MR-002 etc (Mad River Byway)
MS-001 MS-002 etc (Molly Stark Byway)
Drove by the Eureka school house a few times today. The actual marker is by the road … and the school house is set back from the road. Do you want these PP to actually be set on the marker - or on the object they reference (if such a thing exists)?
I attempted to find two in Isle La Motte … did not see them in street view (ca 2008 imagery - not so good) and the coordinates and the house number are pretty far off.
give us a hand!