Exploring Texas History with the Hidden History Map
by Barbara A. Ware
A fun and informative tool on the Texas General Land Office website is the Texas Hidden History map viewer. The map opens with a clickable index page showing the available cities. Click on a city. The current day map will appear in the background with a “circular historical viewer” on top. You can toggle between current day and historic maps of ten cities, Austin’s Colony (1837) and the State of Texas (1849). To see the maps of Texas as a colony or as a state, you will need to select a city from the index page, then click on the “Map” tab. This brings up a menu bar.
On the Dallas map, the original and current Trinity riverbed is visible. Click on “Swap Views” button to place the older map in the background. Increase the size of the map. Then move the circular viewer to see the current view on top of the old location. Experimenting with the Dallas map, you may discover that the two maps don’t line up exactly in a closeup view. Zooming out can help you align the maps. It is interesting to see the change in the Trinity River’s riverbed between 1922 and today. The available cities are:
- Abilene – 1885
- Amarillo – 1909
- Austin – 1939
- Beaumont – 1902
- Dallas – 1922
- El Paso – 1889
- Ft. Worth – 1902
- Galveston – 1836
- Houston – 1900
- San Antonio – 1895
- Colony – 1837
- Texas – 1849
