A blueprint of the North Shore of Wrightsville Beach, with buildings, pipes, and pump stations marked in red.

Over four dozen historical maps, blueprints, and more have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our new partner, the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History. These maps, some dating back to as early as 1923, cover many different parts of the Wilmington and Wrightsville Beach areas and really illustrate to us how wide and varied the geography of New Hanover County really is.

Many of the blueprints detail buildings around Wrightsville Beach, while others show plots of land and city streets. Several of the maps are designed to show specific buildings and building sites, such as the former Babies Hospital at Mott’s Creek in Wilmington. Others are geological cross sections, showing tide lines, jetty locations, and inlets along the coast. These are invaluable blueprints for tracking the coastline, as well as illustrating how the beaches and the towns around them have changed over time.

A photo taken during the mid-scanning process of one of the larger, composited maps of Wrightsville Beach

Many of these maps are massive, with some stretching to nearly 6 feet in length. A few of the aerial shots of Wrightsville Beach were even longer, requiring a small team to handle the map just to make sure it could be documented. As a result, it was a slow process for us to roll out these maps and blueprints, scan them using our overhead camera, composite them into complete shots, and prepare them for production. We have posted an instructional video on our Flickr page to show and explain how we scanned them. Many of them, including the aerial view of Wrightsville Beach, took 3 and sometimes 4 individual shots to stitch together, resulting in images that were sometimes over 8000 pixels high and over 10000 pixels wide.

A portion of a 1956 map from the A.S.C.S. showing Moore Inlet and Mason Inlet.

These maps were in excellent condition, and we are honored in being able to digitize them and host them for everyone to see. To learn more about the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History, please visit their contributor page or their website.

A portion of one map of Carrboro and Chapel Hill – showing Franklin St, Main St, and Greensboro St.

Nearly three dozen maps and blueprints have been digitized and added to DigitalNC, courtesy of our partner, the Chapel Hill Historical Society. Dating from 1929 to 1963, these maps really illustrate how much the city of Chapel Hill has changed in the last century.

Blueprint of the west side of Dr. J.B. Bullitt’s house in Chapel Hill.

This new batch contains many different types of maps and blueprints, including cross sections of the Chapel Hill Municipal Building, a survey of East Rosemary Street, cross sections of local doctor J.B. Bullitt’s home, and Planning Board maps of the Chapel Hill and Carrboro region. Also included are maps for proposed developments of segregated cemeteries, which would have been established next to NC state highway 54. These maps are fascinating to see and compare to what we know of the area today, and to see how much has changed since these maps were created.

These maps are very large, with some stretching out to be over 6 feet in length! While most could be scanned with our overhead PhaseOne camera (our process is documented on video here), several were so large that they had to be framed in a vacuum-sealed rotating container so that they can be preserved in the highest quality. Some of these largest ones took two different shots to compose together, resulting in images that were 7000 pixels tall by 11000 pixels wide. That’s far larger than anything even the most high-tech cell phone cameras can shoot.

One of the maps being scanned inside a vacuum-sealed container for maximum quality

Having these maps and blueprints in our collection is very important, as it helps us understand the changes to the city which DigitalNC calls home. To see more from the Chapel Hill Historical Society, visit their partner page, or take a look at their website.