Advancing Deep Mapping Infrastructure for Community-Driven Spatial Humanities: The Keweenaw Time Traveler

FAIN: HAA-271717-20

Michigan Technological University (Houghton, MI 49931-1200)
Donald Lafreniere (Project Director: January 2020 to January 2026)
Karla Kitalong (Co Project Director: May 2020 to January 2026)
Daniel Trepal (Co Project Director: May 2020 to January 2026)
Robert Pastel (Co Project Director: May 2020 to January 2026)
Sarah Fayen Scarlett (Co Project Director: May 2020 to January 2026)

Improvements to an online historical atlas for Michigan's Copper County from 1880-1950, with rich data about people, buildings, and historical environments from one of the nation's oldest and largest copper mining regions. 

The Keweenaw Time Traveler Project (Level III) is an online historical atlas that includes over 12.9 million variables about the historical environments, buildings, and populations that lived and worked in Michigan’s Copper Country from 1880-1950. A group of interdisciplinary scholars together with our active heritage community is expanding the project to include 1) creating links between historical data sets to permit following populations and environments as they change through time, 2) modeling best practices in the spatial humanities by expanding the capabilities of our existing historical atlas through public-participatory design charrettes, and 3) creating guided activities, lesson plans, public programming, and replicable code for other communities to build their own historical atlas. The result will be a publicly-generated data-rich historical atlas in which community members can discover, explore, and contribute their own information about the regions history and heritage.