OpenHistoricalMap

Oops! #OpenHistoricalMap was supposed to be a map of history, but then the linguists found us and turned us into an accidental map of the history of writing. @mxn shows how we and @maplibre are bringing #HGIS to more language traditions all over the world:

Recording […]

In February, the #OpenHistoricalMap community added 47,171 dated elements, 5,175 buildings, and 7,924¾ railroad miles. The average age of a dated element fell by 10 months, and the average year shifted 5 months later. All this with the help of 43 new contributors – welcome! […]

Or if you’re a mapper in or of somewhere else, stay tuned for additional online get-togethers at a more convenient time for your time zone.

OpenHistoricalMap in North America Join the OpenHistoricalMap team OSM US’s first Mappy Hour of 2026 on Wednesday, March 4th from 8 - 9 pm Eastern. This Mappy Hour kicks off the first of regular online gatherings for the OHM community in Nort...

Mappers in or of North America, join us on March 4 for a #MappyHour hosted by @OpenStreetMapUS. RSVP today:

https://openstreetmap.us/events/mappy-hours/2026/03/ohm-north-america/

A proof of concept for OpenHistoricalMap Americana simulates a road atlas at any point in the history of highway construction. Tour down #Route66 and the other highways that existed at the time.

https://openstreetmap.us/events/mapping-usa/2026/history-hits-the-road/ […]

Help us make 2026 an historic year by participating in our first-ever donation drive! Your generous donation will go directly toward making #OpenHistoricalMap easier to use and contribute to and ensure that our services remain available and reliable as demand increases. Find out more about the […]

All OpenHistoricalMap websites and APIs will be down for approximately 30 minutes this Thursday from 15:00 UTC for a planned server configuration change to improve site reliability. We apologize for the inconvenience.

A line chart of dates along the X axis from May 2025 to present and average age in years along the Y axis from 110 to 140 years. The series seesaws between 125 and 135 except for a drop toward the latter half of last year to 120 before rebounding to 127 this month.

A line chart of dates along the X axis from May 2025 to present and average year along the Y axis from 1920 to 1950. The series mostly stays within the 1930s, steadily rising to the early 1940s in 2025 before a steep drop back to 1938 this month.

This is the single largest increase in the average age of an element and the single largest decline in the average year since recordkeeping began in June 2023. That’s actually a good thing: it means we’re mitigating #recentism, bringing more historical balance to our coverage.

In January, the #OpenHistoricalMap community added 65,731 dated elements, 9,668 buildings, and 15,303½ railroad miles. The average age of a dated element rose by more than 7 years, and the average year shifted more than 4 years earlier. All this with the help of 39 new contributors – welcome! […]

RE: https://en.osm.town/@osm_tech/115968544599864782

This 😣

In December, the #OpenHistoricalMap community added 55,351 dated elements, 13,877 buildings, and 8,959 railroad miles. The average age of a dated element fell by 8 months, and the average year shifted one year later. All this with the help of 31 new contributors – welcome! […]

We deeply appreciate all the help that @greeninfo provided over the years. We look forward to spending an unprecedented 2026 with the #HistoricalMapping and @OpenStreetMapUS communities.

A raw view of the data showing route_lines features with indexed tram route attributes.

A raw data view of the world highlighting country territories as polygons, showing details about Numidia and France.

The main #VectorTiles tileset contains route information for more informative transportation map styles. A new tileset contains territories as polygons, so your custom map can color in a country or other administrative region.

𒆳𒆍𒀭𒊏𒆠 𒌷𒀕 𒋀𒀕𒆠

The map can label #toponyms in #MinorityLanguages #IndigenousLanguages #AncientLanguages, like no other world atlas you’ve ever flipped through.

#localization #internationalization #multilingualism #WritingHistory

Hi Example, In order to complete your request, OpenHistoricalMap needs permission to access information about you, including your email address, on all projects of this site. No changes will be made with your account.

If you contribute to @wikipedia @wikidata #WikimediaCommons #Wikivoyage, you can join OpenHistoricalMap in just a few clicks, without having to juggle yet another password for yet another wiki. It works a lot like our existing OpenStreetMap login support.

#SingleSignOn #OAuth2

OSMCha showing a changeset that adds many streets to Mannheim.

OSMCha showing a changeset that adds boundaries around the world to the French Empire.

#OSMCha can visualize giant changesets without timing out or throwing an error. No one will sneak another empire into OHM without the community noticing it.

#HowToHideAnEmpire

Protection pack (web ACL) activity: summary of your protection rules and how their order contributes to terminating actions. Block-Old-Chrome-UA, Block-countries, and ipset-block-production siphon off about a sixth of the traffic. Of 53,720 requests, 47,700 are allowed and 6,030 are blocked.

#scrapers and #crawlers are waging a constant #DDOS on our site and driving up cloud hosting costs. We’re coping, but if it keeps getting worse, will OHM last? 🫠

Staying afloat, Wikimedia logins, ancient writing, and more In the half a year since we started letting you log in using your OpenStreetMap account, localize map labels into your language, and more, our development team has been busier than ever. Keeping the lights on The last couple months have been unusually stressful for @Rub21, who thoughtfully implements the backend features and bug fixes you ask for. As a project on a shoestring budget, we also make him do double duty as our site reliability engineers. Like much larger sites you love, we’re seeing...

The biggest things that happened in #OpenHistoricalMap development over the past 6 months 🧵

https://forum.openhistoricalmap.org/t/staying-afloat-wikimedia-logins-ancient-writing-and-more/642

Invest in OpenHistoricalMap! OpenHistoricalMap has the daunting (and awesome) mission of building the world’s most detailed out-of-date map. As a Charter Project of OpenStreetMap US, you can help sustain the development of OpenHistoricalMap by donating. Love what we do? Consider also becoming a member of OpenStreetMap US here. Thank you for your support!

@osm_tech For #GivingTuesday we’ll even make a twofer: OSM’s full history data and *our* full Historical data!

https://openstreetmap.app.neoncrm.com/forms/ohm

In November, the #OpenHistoricalMap community added 62,421 dated elements, 21,441 buildings, and 8,072½ railroad miles. The average age of a dated element fell by 17 months, and the average year shifted one year later. All this with the help of 40 new contributors – welcome! […]

RE: https://mapstodon.space/@mapsmania/115617207189840155

A gorgeous new way to explore OpenHistoricalMap’s coverage of #HistoricBoundaries

Screenshot of prototype interface. In the header there's a modern map showing a street address. Under the heading "my house" there's six digitised maps displayed. On each historic map, a marker indicates the street address.

What sorts of things do georeferenced maps make possible? This interface turns a street address into a point, finds georeferenced maps from the SLV that include that point, then displays the historic maps with a marker showing the location of the modern address. #SLVResidency

The OpenHistoricalMap database will be in read-only mode for a planned upgrade next Monday, November 24, at 19:00 UTC. We expect the upgrade to take approximately 3 hours. During that time, you won’t be able to save any changes, but you’ll be able to view and query the map as usual. Thank you […]

There's a new version of the AllMaps editor out, which means I'll need to update my SLV georeferencing documentation! It works the same, but some things have been moved or added. Now includes a 'search' option in the georefencing panel that should make it easier to match maps.

A laptop showing OpenHistoricalMap showing Spain in 1925, held up in front of a sign with the Unicode logo, followed by: time zone conversion, alphabetical sorting, metric versus imperial, scientific notation. Bidirectional text (spelled backwards). Currency exchange, calendar formats, emoji searchability.

It was a privilege to introduce the software #internationalization and #localization community to #OpenHistoricalMap (and #OpenStreetMap and @maplibre) at #UTW2025. Join us in mapping yesterday already!

#i18n #l10n

In October, the #OpenHistoricalMap community added 87,784 dated elements, 28,666 buildings, and 15,202½ railroad miles. The average age of a dated element fell by 15 months, and the average year shifted one year later. All this with the help of 40 new contributors – welcome! […]

@RLin So, you're saying they were used at one point... in history? Any chance you'd have start_dates & end_dates for those points? (and permission to redistribute?) Asking for a friend...

A map of central Europe, focused on Germany that highlights the progress of an OpenHistoricalMap project to depict the historical evolution of the German Autobahn.

Anyone mapping the history of the German Autobahn? We have a particularly fleißig mapper who's coordinating the daunting task of mapping the historical evolution of die Bundesautobahn.

He's off to a great start... and he'd love to have helpers. Maybe, just […]

[Original post on mapstodon.space]

The breakage from last week is now fixed. You can once again use the map in any language and preview tagged images and Wikipedia articles in the sidebar. Please let us know if you continue to see any issues.

@wragge Brilliant app! There are many communities that might benefit from this type of viewer. #Seattle #NYC come to mind.

Now... what about adding a basemap of Melbourne in the 1970s?
https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/#map=13/-37.84631/144.93550&layers=O&date=1975-06-01&daterange=-1999-01-01 […]