In February I read a short story, “Mr. Pfeiffer” by Vicky Mlyniec that is set in Percy, Illinois. Curious, I looked up the place on OSM and found it lacking in mapping. I’ve spent the last four months improving it on the map. Today I am done with buildings and other features inside the village limits.

Earlier this month my husband and I drove by or through a number of small communities in Northern California as we were headed to and from Canada. One of them was Grenada. I was curious to see if it was mapped on OSM. It wasn’t, save for the streets (including some erroneously added ones).

So I’ve spent my mapping time this month on Grenada. And now the buildings and addresses are there.

Tonight I finished mapping every building, every address in Farley Iowa. There are still buildings and farms outside the city limits but that’s a future project.

Arbuckle is a small community of about 3500 people in southern Colusa County. My husband and I stop through there a few times a year as we head north. It has gas stations and a fantastic Mexican restaurant on 5th street.

So it seemed like a good place to focus on mapping. I have about 100 homes left on the north west corner of the community. I started the project in January on business trip to Chico.

All that’s left is things like power poles, fire hydrants. But every building has a shape now. Every thing that has an address is now on the map.

I know in a month or so I will have to go back and adjust 2nd at Windfeldt as a new sidewalk is being put in. It’s about 2/3 complete.

I started the mapping process on November 18. So five months to map my home.

Tonight I finished mapping Maud, meaning the bulk of Fairview California is mapped. There are still some places along Fairview Avenue as it goes around in a circle and becomes Hayward but this is area shared by Hayward, Castro Valley and Fairview.

It feels so good to see my home there and recognizable.

I started this project in earnest on November 18th (although I did my own street back in June).

I worked on Norse and Orchard in Golden Colorado. The area could use some mapping love.

Info from:

https://gis.jeffco.us/webmaps/pzpublic/index.html

I worked on Lloy street today in Portage MI. It could use some mapping love. Streets are there but not much else.

Porage GIS: https://mi-portage.civicplus.com/177/GIS-City-Maps

Today while looking at the hand drawn parcel maps that the county provides I learned the creek that runs through my neighborhood has changed it’s name. On the maps it’s called Sulphur Spring Creek. On all the other maps I’ve seen, road signs, and from what we locals call it, it’s just Sulphur Creek. There’s even a nature center / animal rescue that is named for the creek. They don’t use the spring in their name either.

OK… after getting the comment re sulfurous springs, I did some digging. I haven’t found any historic proof of the claim in this article from last year, but …

“Nestled in the Hayward hills, the Sulphur Creek Nature Center is home to dozens of birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals, including a coyote and a fox. The site straddles a small section of Sulphur Creek, named after the sulphur water bubbling up from nearby springs. In 1970, H.A.R.D. acquired the property, then a wellness retreat, and transformed it into the animal sanctuary it is today.”

The “spring” part of the creek is shown to be at the current location of the nature center. The other creeks that feed into it have been conflated into all being “Sulphur Creek” I suppose.

https://tricityvoice.com/sulphur-creek-nature-center-completes-renovation/

It is both weird and cool to see the map of my community change in apps I use regularly. Before I started actively updating things in OSM I didn’t recognize all the places OSM is used.

I have to mapping projects I’m doing here. The first one, the one that has most of my focus is my home community of Fairview, California. The other is Canonsburg, Pennsylvania. For both projects I rely on a variety of tools:

• the Bing visual
• Google maps
• County GIS records

While Google has good data most of the time, I have spotted a couple dozen errors since I’ve started on these projects. When I can easily submit a correction to them, I do. When I can’t, I make sure my work better reflects what the county map tells me.

https://accda.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=2045711bf8a44a109d83d31300e5f5ed

Ashland, Cherryland, Hayward Acres and Fairview all used to have “Hayward” as their city for their addresses. The U.S. post office reverted their names to their historical place names. I am taking care of Fairview (I live here) but if anyone wants to help with the other communities, please jump in.

I started mapping my community last month. Looking at how the map is filling in, I think I’m about 1/4 to a 1/3 done with getting Fairview on the map. I’m focusing on homes, property boundaries, trees, pools and other out buildings.

Tonight I also worked on sidewalks and crossings.

Flickr is how I learned about Open Street Map. They use OSM data for their maps. Places that haven’t been worked on can only be found via coordinates. It’s frustrating.

Parma, Ohio, for example could use some love and attention.

I worked a little more on Crowder. It may be a small town compared to my home town but it takes a lot more concentration. I don’t know the area and there isn’t as much on line information meaning I have to be slow and deliberate with how I map. I want to do right by Crowder.

I worked on two city blocks.

Fairview is comprised of smaller former real estate ventures. When a new area was built it was given a name by its developers. I am slowly researching those development names and adding them to OSM as I go. My neighborhood, for example, was called Hill-N-Dale. Tonight I’m working on Hayward Heights, which still displays its sign where it branches off from East Avenue.

I’ve lived in this unincorporated neighborhood since 2004. Earlier this year, the U.S. Post Office with feedback from the Fairview Municipal Advisory Council (and surveys sent to residents) reverted our place name from “Unincorporated Hayward” to Fairview while leaving the zip code the same: 94541.

Twenty-one years of living here I’ve learned that you either know about this area and how it works or you’ve never heard of it. I was originally of the “never heard of it.” In 2010 I worked as a census enumerator sent to addresses that hadn’t mailed in their census packet. That’s when I really got to learn how Fairview works and how to use local data to better understand the area.

Now I am slowly working through my neighborhood in OSM to map it. I started with my house (my second residence here) and I’m working my way out. I am learning by doing (and reading the wiki).