As a long-time Virginian AND long-time user of the wonderful on-line
resources of Virginia History brought to us by the Library of Virginia,
I must call your attention to an outstanding history site that is NOT
Virginia.  The saving grace is that it is at least in the right part of
the country -- Georgia.

If you are interested in Civil War History, and love to wallow in maps,
go to:
       www.civilwar.gatech.edu

First you will find color maps of the US with a gaggle of different
plots.... %Population Change 1860-1870, Number of Slaves per Square
Mile, Manufacturing, Farming, etc.

But the Battlefield part is what grabbed me.  Bill Drummond has produced
three-D maps of a few battles, including Virginia's own
Chancellorsville.  He is working on animated battle development for the
web.  Simply Awesome!!!

Much of his on-the-ground work is done with GPS, and pictures of Atlanta
during The Battle Thereof and Today (The Georgia Tech Campus) really
make for living history.  I have used an inxpensive GPS from STAPLES
($89) to do some local mapping (not really history, since I was looking
for land boundary markers) here in Clarke County, and foundd it an
excellent tool.  I projected the location of the marker, walked through
the woods, and after a minute or two, found a stake within the +-
30-foot circle where my calculations said it should be.

I think Drummond's use of technology to bring history alive is something
woefully lacking here in the Old Dominion.  Ed Ayers at UVA did some
excellent work some years ago, but I don't think it was recognized nor
the ideas picked up as they should have been.  In my own area, the
Valley of Virginia, my perception of Civil War Battlefield Preservation
efforts is best described by Crock's Lost Patrol, which used to wander
through the pages of the comics.  "Outdated Solutions to Yesterday's
Problems" comes to mind all to often in what we do to teach and share
(Virginia) history.

If this sounds like a challenge, well maybe it is.  I would LOVE to
build a list of Bookmarks to some outstanding sites which present
Virginia History well.  I'll start the list with Bill Drummond's.

Randy Cabell

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