Need your help

[Dkemp]

Hi everyone, i ended up here because im trying to learn more about our family farm. In looking over some old usgs topo maps i came across three buildings i hadn't known were there. An aerial photo from 1952 seems to suggest someone was squatting on part of the land. One thing I haven't been able to piece together is a large red dot near the buildings? I can't find a key that will tell me what it means? Its only there until 1966. Any idea what it could be?

[Redrobes]

Sure - we can have a look. If you reply have a look at the bottom of the page where it says Go Advanced and in there is Manage Attachments and then it takes you to the attachment manager. In there you can upload bitmaps and JPGs etc. Post the map up and we can have a look.

Also, it might be useful to know where in the world your located as we can think about what archives and other places we could possibly look into. If your using USGS then I would assume the US but I am not sure at state level what archives they might have but someone on here will pop in with links to some resources which could help. If its a USGS map then it may have a standard key where we can find out what that symbol means.

[Dkemp]

Sure - we can have a look. If you reply have a look at the bottom of the page where it says Go Advanced and in there is Manage Attachments and then it takes you to the attachment manager. In there you can upload bitmaps and JPGs etc. Post the map up and we can have a look.

Also, it might be useful to know where in the world your located as we can think about what archives and other places we could possibly look into. If your using USGS then I would assume the US but I am not sure at state level what archives they might have but someone on here will pop in with links to some resources which could help. If its a USGS map then it may have a standard key where we can find out what that symbol means.

red dot in context.jpg

Thanks! Hopefully the attachment works. The site i'm describing is in the lower left quarter of the map. There is a long dirt lane going to three outbuildings. My understanding is it would be a filled in square if it was a home. Someone must have been living there based on the aerial photo. Also, there is a basement dug out where one of the buildings had been, as well as a hand pumped well. The red dot is near the entrance from the main road. Who ever was there must have been known to the neighbors, but curiously nobody in the area can tell me anything about it 70 years later. We are South of Wrenshall, MN in the United States.

[eepjr24]

Following. I found nothing on red squares for historical USGS markers. Closest guess for me would be a survey marker? Red can mean that, but squares are almost always buildings.

- E

[Redrobes]

Well it looks like MN in the US has a complete LIDAR scan of it. Does anyone feel like downloading some and rendering it ?

http://www.mngeo.state.mn.us/chouse/...idar.html#data

I live in an area of the UK where there is considerable historical earthworks and even the smallest shows up pretty well on a lidar scan if the resolution is good enough like 1m or so. If there were buildings or any significant digging or foundations going on to buildings that are no more then they usually show up on lidar renders. If that red dot was a physical attribute of the land it would probably show.

(I am not familiar with the state and names etc.)

[Dkemp]

Mysterious_buildings_1952.jpgred dot zoom.png
Thanks for the Help! These are aerial shots of the site from 1952. It's too grainy to make out much of anything clearly. My understanding is the topo map was probably made at least in part from this photograph. The USGS was conducting soil surveys in this area about the same time, I would assume they were mapping land features at the same time. So it's possible data was collected on the ground as well. Black dots would have been tanks. I suppose it's possible it's just a farm fuel tank? But, you'd expect to see more of them at other homesteads if that was the case.

[eepjr24]

Mysterious_buildings_1952.jpgred dot zoom.png
Thanks for the Help! These are aerial shots of the site from 1952. It's too grainy to make out much of anything clearly. My understanding is the topo map was probably made at least in part from this photograph. The USGS was conducting soil surveys in this area about the same time, I would assume they were mapping land features at the same time. So it's possible data was collected on the ground as well. Black dots would have been tanks. I suppose it's possible it's just a farm fuel tank? But, you'd expect to see more of them at other homesteads if that was the case.

You said they were hand pumping water, could be a water tank? If the other homesteads had running water for irrigation a tank is not needed for that, correct?

- E