Mapping Local History With GIS in Saratoga County, NY
Imagine what we could individually learn about local cities by using maps to understand their histories. Connecting history and place through GIS technology has the possibility to activate awareness and independent research initiatives in local communities. On Thursday, February 21st, a Historians Meeting took place in Skidmore’s new GIS Center, featuring Ron Feulner, the town...
The Geography of the Creative Thinking [UPDATED]
Maps are becoming more than what people have traditionally referred to as maps. They are becoming personal, creative, unique representations of the seen and unseen world. Here are some examples. Recently it has been brought to my attention that when people think about maps, they think about the old Rand McNally road maps or they...
Mystery Map XI Revealed
Mystery Map XI has been revealed! The original unedited map is pictured above showing Wind Resources for the state of New York. The maps were developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and TrueWind in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Powering America program. Maps like these are often involved in the...
Mystery Map XI
It’s fall, the leaves are blowing, and Skidmore’s GIS Center is back and starting the year off with a new space and a new Mystery Map! Leave comments below with your guesses and the solution will be announced next Friday. The first correct answer in the comments will receive an ESRI map book. Good Luck!...
Getting Started With The Skidmore Community Carpool
Hi Folks, Well, you already know carpooling is a good thing. So how do you find someone to carpool with from the Skidmore Community? A few years ago, a Skidmore GIS student worked to create a map of all the people that work at Skidmore College. You can view it here: With this map, you...
Mystery Map X Revealed
Price Chopper vs. Wegmans Supermarkets Spend a lifetime in your Saratoga Springs Price Chopper supermarket and you might overhear but a murmur—while Price Chopper markets abound in Saratoga (we have three!), upstate New York’s other supermarket titan, Wegman’s, is entirely absent. That murmur thus begs the question: why is Price Chopper Saratoga’s dominant supermarket? Where...
Mystery Map X
The new Mystery Map is here! When you've got a guess put it in the comments. We'll announce the winner next week.
Mystery Map IX Revealed
This week’s Mystery Map traces the geographic distribution of Stewart’s convenience-shop businesses. Stewart’s is a family-owned business based in Saratoga Springs. Operations began in 1945, when the Dake family purchased a dairy shop from Donald Stewart of Ballston Spa. That year, the first Stewart’s ice cream shop opened on Route 50, in Ballston Spa. In...
Mystery Map IX
We’re thrilled to bring you this week’s map in a new format. Over the past several weeks, we’ve worked to bring you dynamic maps, so that you may move around and further explore the mapped data. Today, we bring you the result: If you have any issues viewing or interacting with the map please post...
Mystery Map VIII Revealed
Here is the solution to Mystery Map VIII. On Skidmore’s campus and beyond, debate rages concerning the morality, feasibility, and economic dynamics of the hydraulic fracturing of shales, or “fracking”—the process of fracturing deeply buried shales to exploit otherwise-inaccessible gas resources. In spite of heated discourse on the issue, however, many people lack a fundamental...
Mystery Map VIII
The GIS Center would like to introduce you to a new mystery map. What do you think this map represents? It is undoubtedly a curious distribution across the United States, highlighting two facets of some phenomenon….. You know the drill…leave a guess in the comments. Free T-shirt to the first Skidmore student who gets it...
