I am fascinated by the maps that are available on the Web.

I learned a tremendous amount by looking at the wetlands map from Marlene Schroeder in yesterday’s post.

I also continue to be intrigued by the City of Newburyport’s GIS map, http://gis.nbpt.us (see earlier post.)

You can drag your mouse and make a square around the area of Newburyport that you would like to see and then it zooms and makes a close-up.

Or you can put in the number and street name and get the property.

For example if you put 325 High, you can see the property that Jim Mellett of Marlin Properties bought. To be fair to everyone, the house that is proposed to be demolished is a 1978 ranch, not exactly an historic dwelling. But, you can see on the map that without that piece of property there would be no way Mr. Mellett could ever have done the infill project he is now proposing. (See the Undertoad Blog for details.)

If you put in 75 High, you can see the Wheelwright property. You can get a sense of how large a parcel of land it is. The lot extends all the way back to Greenleaf Street (which becomes Brown Street) and the cemetery.

(Again, I have no idea what is happening to that property, but from the map, one can imagine that developers could do all sorts of things, unfortunately. You can also get a sense of how much land there still is behind the “Ridge,” the area on the upper side of High Street from State Street to about Lime Street. Not to mention in front of the Ridge!)

There are also other kinds of maps online. The links are at:
http://www.mass.gov/mgis/mapping.htm

There are maps for:

Open Space
Wetlands
Priority and Estimated Habitats-Endangered Species
Biodiversity Days Maps
Areas of Critical Environmental Concern
Community Preservation Viewer
An aerial map in color
An aerial map in black and white

At the bottom there is a link that says “MassGIS recommends these other online mapping sites!” And there are some very interesting maps on there too.

Mary Eaton, Newburyport