ARCH 702/LAR 802: The Learning Barge

Elizabeth River Project

Note: Many of the digital map images found below are MrSid images. For information on using MrSids, click here.

GIS Resources

The Scholars' Lab has acquired current GIS data for Norfolk, Portsmouth and Chesapeake that may be used to make detailed maps and printouts. The disks are kept at the Scholars' Lab desk and must be used within the lab. Small portions of the data may be copied for use on other computers. Follow the link below for step-by-step instructions on using these data.

GIS Instructions

GIS data for the Norfolk/Portsmouth/Chesapeake area is also available through the Virginia Gazatteer. What will probably be of most interest to this project would be the DOQQ aerial photos and possibly the DRG (scanned topographic maps). It is easiest to do either a county or a quadrangle search, although feature searches will work as well.

Virginia Gazetteer

Digital and Paper Map Resources

Topographic Maps

Several topographic maps covering the Elizabeth River area have been scanned and are available online.

Scanned Topographic Maps

Nautical Charts

The Naval Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) produces nautical charts of U.S. waterways which come to the Library through the Federal Depository program. Digital scans (jpg format) of current nautical charts containing the Elizabeth River are linked below. The images are large, and some browsers may have difficulty opening them. To download the images, right-click on the link and choose "Save Target as..." (in Internet Explorer) or "Save Image as" (in Netscape or Mozilla).

Norfolk Harbor and Elizabeth River

Norfolk To Albemarle Sound via North Landing River or Great Dismal Swamp Canal

Cape Henry to Currituck Beach Light

Chesapeake Bay Cape Charles to Norfolk Harbor

Historical nautical charts can be accessed online through NOAA's Historical Maps and Charts project. Type in the area of interest (i.e. Elizabeth River or Portsmouth) for the keyword, select "Virginia" for the region, and type of map, if desired. Nautical charts for the Elizabeth River region are available back to 1878.

Aerial Photograph of Elizabeth River's Southern Branch

A mosaic of aerial photographs of the Elizabeth River in downtown Norfolk is available here. This is a large zip file (71 MB) of a very large tif (420 MB).

Other Historical Map Resources

Sanborn Fire Insurance maps provide historical planimetric data for most major U.S. cities including Portsmouth. Most cities have maps dating from the mid-1880s to about 1950, however, federal territory such as the U.S. Navy Yard are not included. PDF copies of index maps for Portsmouth are listed below:

The U.S. Congressional Series Set contains almost 50,000 maps produced by directive of the U.S. Congress. Covering a wide range of geography and subject matter, maps in this series go back to the late 18th century. Most maps have been scanned and are available through Lexis/Nexis. Conducting a geographic area/subject search for Elizabeth River and Virginia will return several historic documents that contain maps of the Elizabeth River area and the Norfolk Naval Yard. Click on the link at the bottom of the full record to open PDF files containing documents with maps. Complete instructions for accessing the CSS maps in Lexis/Nexis can be found here.

The Library of Congress has a good collection of historical maps in its American Memory collection. To access their online map collection, choose one or more collections (the generic "Maps" collection seems to have the most relevance to this project), and search by a geographic term. You can view the map using their viewer, or download a MrSid image.

Paper copies of historical topographic maps of the Norfolk South quadrangle are available in the 3rd floor map room reserve case. Topographic maps were produced every 10-15 years from 1921 to 1994.

Demographic Data

American Factfinder provides access to demographic data for 1990 and 2000. Subjects covered include gender, race, age, and tenure (own vs. rent) in SF1, and many social, economic, and housing characteristics in SF3. Factfinder generates tables and maps that can be printed or downloaded (tables in a variety of formats, maps as pdf). A user guide providing basic instruction on using the site is available. Mappable data from the 1970 and 1980 Census can also be generated using the CensusCD+Maps series. These disks are available in the Scholars' lab and must be used in the lab. Older data are available online through the Historical Census Browser, but only down to the county level. Tract data for earlier decades is available, but only in the publications housed in the Government Documents area of Alderman Library.