French or US maps of Belleau wood and Chateau Thierry

[geoffreyphipps]

I am starting research and map making for my next historical wargame (following Gallipoli from GMT and Mons to be from Compass in 2025). I am looking for contemporary maps of the Belleau Wood (Bois de Belleau) and Chateau Thierry area, around 1:50,000.  I plan to use QGIS and OpenTopograhy DEMs for elevation, but I need contemporary information for everything else.

I used British maps for Mons, but their series that does not seem to extend that far south. I spent an afternoon looking online but have not found US or French army maps of that period (obviously they had them), eg https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6997167

Can anyone point me to a general index and source of digital copies?
Thanks in advance

Geoffrey Phipps

[WhiteStarLine]

Hi Geoffrey,

This is just outside the sector traditionally associated with the British Army - however there are French maps available.  The Western Front Association have a team who georeferenced 6,500 maps using QGIS and recently finished geotagging 50,000 points of interest from Knocke to just north of Reims.  There is a pool of German, French & Italian maps awaiting georeferencing and some on the team want to concentrate next efforts on the southern edge of the British maps downwards.

The version of TrenchMapper being tested has elevation profiling and uses the eudem 25 metre dataset from Open Topography.  Then we build in intervisibility, so users can hone in on the highest feature and also use the opacity slider to view modern ground.  Street View arrows are synced with the underlying trench map.  Obviously, we have a bit in common.

PM me and we can discuss potential cooperation.  Currently we have 1 French map and 5 USA georeferenced maps in production but we do have some French maps in our queue.  Some of these are supplied on a Creative Commons,  Click to enlarge image.

Cheers, Bill

Chateau Thierry Champagne Marne Aisne Marne Map 2 Sheet 2
1:20,000 Edition: 1938 28th Division Chateau Thierry sector 28 Jun - 14 Jul,

Champagne Marne defensive 15 - 18 Jul and Aisne Marne offensive 18 - 27 Jul 1918. Printed 27-Jul-18

[geoffreyphipps]

Wow thanks. I tried trenchmapper but there must have been a problem between the keyboard and the chair :-)

 

[WhiteStarLine]

32 minutes ago, geoffreyphipps said:

there must have been a problem

The problem would have been at the TrenchMapper end.  The point of interest search cuts out a little north of Reims, with a handful of exceptions.  No result is returned for belleau, but thierry does work.

[geoffreyphipps]

Thank you! C'est bon!