1. HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHIC
INFORMATION SYSTEMS
AND THE HISTORIC 1896
TORNADO OF ST. LOUIS AND
EAST ST. LOUIS
Grace Kellner

2. Purpose
• Make digital representation of 1896 tornado path
and destruction through St. Louis and E St. Louis
• Use historical narrative and ArcGIS
tornados.slpl.org tornados.slpl.orgwww.usgennet.org

3. Outline
• What is HGIS?
• HGIS Background
• St. Louis Tornado
• Process of Creation
• Historical narrative
& images
• Difficulties
• Further Research
• Conclusions
tornados.slpl.org

4. Geographic Information Systems
• GIS
• Computer-based mapping and spatial analysis
technology
• Link points, lines, areas and information
• Overlay map layers to see connections
• Cluster/dispersion of spatial phenomena

5. Historical Geographic Information
Systems
• HGIS
• Map historical data
• Census
• Statistics
• Econometric data
• Digitize historical maps
• Process historical attribute
data
• Originally developed for
environmental
sciences, military, and
cartography
www.gisforhistory.org

6. HGIS Uses
• Environment
• Track species’ changing habitat
• Track migratory routes
• Social History
• American Indian agricultural irrigation
• National Historical Geographic Information
Systems
• “aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary
files for the United States between 1790 and 2012”

7. Benefits of HGIS
• Focus on environmental studies in a geographical
perspective
• Determine historical accuracy
• Predict spread of species
• Define spatial processes in ways historians
haven’t been able to
• Display changing boundaries of administrative
units
• Visualization
• Can allow new questions to develop
• New answers to old questions

8. HGIS Projects
• Historical GIS Canada
• National Historical Geographic Information
Systems
• China HGIS
• Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative
• HGIS Germany
• GHIS Netherlands
• Mammoth Cave Historical GIS

9. 1896 St. Louis Tornado
• 3rd Deadliest tornado
• Most costly tornado
• $3.8 million in damages
• 255 fatalities
• Estimated F4 on Fujita scale
• Wednesday, May 27th
• Began near city hospital,
ended in E St. Louis
• Began ~5:00 p.m.
• 1 mile wide
• 7.5 miles long

10. Process of Creation
• The Great Cyclone at St. Louis
and East St. Louis, May 27,
1896
• Primary source of information
• Historical narrative primarily
from Julian Curzon
• Compiled from accounts and
photos immediately following
tornado

11. Process: Choose a Basemap
• 1914 TIFF of St. Louis
• Parker, Engraving Co.
• Not identical to 1896 streets
• Good detail
• North-aligned
• Legible
• St. Louis, St. Louis County, East St. Louis
included

13. Creation: Georeference
• = to associate something with actual physical
locations
• 2010 Topologically Integrated Geographic
Encoding and Referencing (TIGER) roads
• Overlay on 1914 basemap
• Match to basemap
• 740 georeferenced points

14. Process: Georeference
• Georeferencing Error
• Stretching of basemap
• Folds in basemap

15. Georeferenced Points

16. Stretched
Basemap

17. Plot the Tornado
• “In a tempest of discordant sound the tornado
swooped down on the Poorhouse, worked its will
and continued on its way. The Female Hospital,
just across the street, was right in its path, but the
vagaries of a tornado are hard to understand. It
took a slight trend to the east and south…”
• Where did it actually start?
• Estimate

18. Interpreting Text
“The large furniture store of Wm. Ottenad, at
Soulard and Broadway, was completely destroyed.
Ottenad, his wife and a clerk and a driver were
buried in the wreck…”
• Interpreted: Three dead at Soulard and Broadway

19. Ottenad Furniture Co.
“Ottenad Furniture Co., Broadway and Soulard Street
(A number of people were killed here)

20. Interpreting Text
“The roof of the Sumner High School, on Eleventh
and Spruce streets, took a vacation…”
• Interpreted: Sumner High School on 11th and
Spruce was damaged.
• Data were assigned to the center of the
intersection

21. Sumner High School

22. 7th and Rutgers

23. Final Estimated Path

24. Documented Historical Path
http://www.stl250.org/crash-course-fourth-city.aspx

25. http://www.distilledhistory.com/1896cyclone/

27. Future Work
• Plot addresses
• Finish digitizing of all city elements
• Make accessible online
• Show path of tornado with time
• Path of destruction
• Process of creation could be extrapolated to other
studies

28. Sources
• Bigler, W. 2009. Using GIS to investigate fine-scale patterns in historical
American Indian agriculture. Historical Geography, 33, 14-32.
• Curzon, J. 1896. The Great Cyclone at St. Louis and East St. Louis. St.
Louis: Cyclone Publishing.
• Fitch, C.A., & Ruggles, S. 2003. Building the National Historical
Geographic Information System. Historical Methods, 36, 41-51.
• Gregory, I.N., & Healey, R.G. 2007. Historical GIS: structuring, mapping
and analysing geographies of the past. Progress in Human Geography,
31(5), 638-653.
• Gregory et al. 2002. The Great Britain Historical GIS Project: from maps
to changing human geography. The Cartographic Journal, 37-49.
• Hillier, A. 2010. Invitation to mapping: how GIS can facilitate new
discoveries in urban and planning history. Journal of Planning History, 9,
122-134.
• Knowles, A. 2005. Emerging Trends in Historical GIS. Historical
Geography, 33, 7-13.
• Levin, N., Kark, R., & Galilee, E. 2009. Maps and the settlement of
southern Palestine, 1799-1948: an historical/GIS analysis. Journal of
Historical Geography, 1-21.

29. Questions?