State Of The Stats

Rutgers University Press’s interpretive atlas is a history buff’s beautifully browsable bonanza.

Posted November 9, 2009 by Eric Levin

The invention of the airplane, combined with photography, revolutionized mapmaking in the 1920s, giving rise to a new breed of cartographers called photogrammetrists—aerial photo interpreters. In New Jersey, two of the things aerial photography allowed photogrammetrists to chart were land use and gypsy-moth infestations.
You’ll find that information on page 6 of Mapping New Jersey: An Evolving Landscape (Rutgers University Press), the first interpretative atlas of the state in more than a century. Editors Maxine N. Lurie and Peter O. Wacker and cartographer Michael Siegel have created a fascinating, multifarious portrait of a state that hasn’t stood still since European settlers began trading with the Tappan, Hackensack, Raritan, Navasink, Sankhikan, Remkokes, Momakarongk, Sewapois, and other Lenape bands. Famously diverse in population, New Jersey is equally various in geology, weather, and soil—in fact, we’ve got 27 kinds.

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