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Pastmaps — Maps for historical research
Explore hundreds of thousands of high-resolution historical maps and dive deep with easy-to-use research tools. For professionals and enthusiasts alike.
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Craig Campbell
Maker
📌
Hey ya'll! I'm Craig - founder of Pastmaps here and ridiculously excited to finally share what I've been building as a solo bootstrapped founder with the wider Product Hunt community!
The vision for https://pastmaps.com is for it to become the world's largest digital collection of historical maps, aerials, photos, documents, and stories. My goal is to make history accessible to everyone, and the only way to do that is to make doing this kind of exploration and research as easy to use as Google Maps.
It's still very early innings, but Pastmaps today already offers over 185,000 hi-res maps covering the entirety of the US alongside advanced research tools such as overlay layer features, satellite views, LiDAR-based layers, and even 3D mode to explore these old maps like never before.
Even with the product in it's current early state, Pastmaps is being actively used by geneologists, metal detectorists, archeologists, urban explorers, search & rescue teams, and more. The exploding number of use-cases has been exciting to see (don't even get me started on the paranormal researchers using the platform 👻)
Give Pastmaps a try and let me know what you think - what features would you like to see me add that would make Pastmaps stellar for your research needs? And thank you so much for taking the time to check out my lil' labor of love!
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@ccampbell I really love the product. So cool to see how my hometown has changed over the decades. Thanks for building in public.
@ccampbell this looks really cool! I'm going to wait until I get some free time to start my free trial though, so I have the time to get elbow-deep in those maps.
@ccampbell Really cool product, and it's been exciting to follow your journey! Congrats on the product hunt launch!
@ccampbell Have followed through your building journey, filled with insight around this product. Thanks for bringing up this tool alive, it is very helpful for people that are fascinated with maps, history and many other things related to soil, land and maps!
Congrats on the launch! Really cool seeing the evolution of pastmaps over the last few months, and enjoyed seeing old maps of Seattle + suburbs.
Thanks so much for building in public. This is so cool and I, for one, would love to hear how paranormal researchers are using Pastmaps. 👏👏
Really exciting tool that I’ve had my eye on for a while, looking forward to broader coverage as it grows!
I'd be curious to see if you came across David Rumsey collection in your research? It's one of the largest map archives, and they offer a way for user's to georeference maps and submit for others to use: https://www.davidrumsey.com/view...
Congrats Craig! I had no idea how much I could learn about here I just moved to from historic maps until I went down the PastMaps rabbit hole. Now check it when I travel to put the built environment in context. Such a novel idea well executed.
super cool to see this launch. wonder if a zillow/redfin collab makes sense in the future