The recent remapping of "ancient roads" in Vermont raises questions of the sufficient thickness of a cartographical description of roads which were once widely used. Which unmapped paths, preserved in old property deeds and registers, that run across the underpopulated state? Remote sensing has often displaced terrestrial surveying--and Google Maps as a dominant form of way finding--the range of cartographical strategies enlisted to petition for the recognition of ancient or "sleeping" roads as legal is an attempt to save those common-law byways currently classified as "unidentified corridors" from devolving to private property. The counter-mapping of unused roads created in Vermont's rich past may reaffirm the primacy of the local in the state. For while not registered in the current Highway map, the array of Town Highways in Vermont that are dormant are being resurveyed in a frenzy of cartographical feeding from local compilations, others in crumbling deeds that respond to a map focussing on major highways and property lines. Continue reading ![]()
