Monday, December 31, 2012

12/31/2012 Essex County Greenbelt Maps (on Google Maps)

In 2012, my wife and I have enjoyed the natural beauty around us here on Cape Ann and the North Shore of Boston. There are several organizations that manage beautiful properties, ranging from nationally-known (The Trustees of Reservations, Massachusetts Audubon Society) to local land banks (Manchester-Essex Conservation Trust). One favorite of mine is the Essex County Greenbelt Association: ECGA owns and manages over 5,000 acres of land and many miles of trails throughout Essex County, and has a great series of pushpins-on-Google-Maps: http://www.ecga.org/explore_and_engage/properties
When you click on a pushpin, you get a nice little infowindow:
I'm looking for a map, so I click Read More, and get the Property Description page:
There is an excellent pdf map of the Property:
But I want to see the map in interactive Google Maps. My first step is to trim the pdf:
My second step is to geo-reference the image - I need to get the latitude and longitude coordinates of the northeast (upper-right) and southwest (lower-left) corners of the image. I like using MapInfo within which I can get the latitude/longitude numbers for my cursor location. I have my own Google account and my own id for displaying Google Maps on my website (it is free). They have excellent documentation, and I can integrate an Overlay into Google Maps:
the map's url: http://www.dennisdixon.net/maps_EssexCountyGreenbelt/stoney_coveoriginal.htm

I modified the code to be able to toggle the Trail map on-and-off:
the improved map's url: http://www.dennisdixon.net/maps_EssexCountyGreenbelt/stoney_cove.htm

No comments:

Post a Comment