SUMMARY

Topographic and hydrographic surveys of Long Island completed from the 1830s – 1890s by the United States Coast Survey represent the first set of detailed surveys of the region made using triangulated survey instruments. Actually the surveys were the first to be produced by the Coast Survey, initiated by Thomas Jefferson under the direction of the Survey's first Superintendent, Ferdinand Hassler.

Stony Brook University holds bromide facsimiles of the topographic T-sheet) and hydrographic (H-sheet) surveys, some of which are longer than 3 meters. Cynthia Dietz, Map Librarian, created the metadata fields, which closely comply with Dublin Core, FGDC and EPA standards, while interns and students populated the metadata fields. Place keywords, theme keywords, coverage, and town fields, should help people locate areas of interest to them. The "Relation" field links the user to an index map, so that s/he may quickly find neighboring T-sheets. The theme keywords were taken from the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) feature class. The West, East, North and South Coordinate fields indicate the most westerly, easterly, northerly and southerly extent in UTM coordinates on each given map, respectively.

Project Interns: Vanessa Viola, St. John's University and Lauren Bernat, St. John's University

Digitizing the sheets became a priority due to the frequency of requests for access, and due to our concern to preserve items that are no longer available in hard copy from NOAA.

The T-sheets of the Stony Brook University collection were scanned at 600 dpi in RGB into TIFFs. In many cases, panels of each sheet or “Part” were made so that each panel could be losslessly compressed for quick viewing and retrieval. The loading of our JPEG 2000 images continues, as our scanning project proceeds. In a few cases, images will be reloaded for better viewing and resolution.

For those T-sheets not currently scanned, metadata only records have been loaded to describe our hard copy holdings.

Note that for many of the earlier surveys in the Long Island Region, URLs to items in the University of Alabama Collection are indicated. Their images were scanned from negatives at 1200 dpi. The Alabama site presents each sheet in its entirety, which aids in visual searches.

LONG ISLAND

The boundaries of municipalities and the names of places in the Long Island Region during the 1800s have not been retained in many instances. In this map, today’s towns, cities and counties have been identified. Searching for T-sheets by town may assist the user in locating an area of interest.

U.S. Coast Survey, Long Island maps - 1830s & 1890s

Click on the T-sheet numbers on the index maps to link directly to the map of interest.

Index Map of 1830’s – 1840’s T-sheets

Index maps showing the boundaries of the T-sheets created during the 1830s -1840s have been created by region:

• Northern Nassau County
• Southern Nassau County
• Northwest Suffolk County
• North Central Suffolk County
• Northeast Suffolk County
• Southwest Suffolk County
• South Central Suffolk County
• Southeast Suffolk County

Click on the T-sheet numbers on the index maps to link directly to the map of interest.

Index Map of 1880’s - 1890’s T-sheets

Index maps showing the boundaries of the T-sheets created during the 1880’s - 1890’s have been created by region as well:

• Northern Nassau County
• Southern Nassau County
• Northwest Suffolk County
• North Central Suffolk County
• Northeast Suffolk County
• Southwest Suffolk County
• South Central Suffolk County
• Southeast Suffolk County

FERDINAND HASSLER

The U.S. Coast & Geodetic Survey began in 1807 when President Thomas Jefferson hand-picked Ferdinand Hassler as its first superintendent. Hassler’s fastidious expertise in geodetic and triangulation survey techniques were originally intended to guide mariners in and out of New York harbor. He confidently recognized its centrality and grounded the zero longitudinal baselines there.

Before his reassignment to the U.S. Coast Survey in 1832, he served as Head of National Standards of Weights and Measures. Although he did not resume command of the U.S. Coast Survey until the latter part of his career, it is perhaps his greatest accomplishment.