I read about the Degree Confluence Project in Graham Robb's The Discovery of Middle Earth as part of his discussion of Celtic and Druidic mapping of Europe.
The Degree Confluence Project is a World Wide Web-based all-volunteer project which aims to have people visit each of the integer degree intersections of latitude and longitude on Earth, posting photographs and a narrative of each visit online. The project describes itself as "an organized sampling of the world"...Everyone lives within 49 miles of such a confluence. The photo above is from the confluence closest to my favorite recreation area. It shows the Heartland Bike Trail at 47°00'000" N /95°00'000" W (just west of Walker, Minnesota).
The total number of degree confluences is 64,442, of which 21,543 are on land, 38,409 on water, and 4,490 on the Antarctic and Arctic ice caps....
The project's website is here. It's easy to use, and you can access sites worldwide. Here's a composite of the worldwide confluences for which photos are posted:
Try a location near you. Or type a random pair of numbers in the search box and explore.
This was really cool. And the reason I read TYWKIWDBI.
ReplyDeleteA new "thing" for geochachers?
ReplyDeleteAnd let us not forget the small town of Poniatowski, WI, "which is impossible to find on State Maps, but ridiculously easy on a four inch globe"...(from the song of the same name by Lou and Peter Berryman) It's at 45 Degrees North, 90 Degrees West in Wisconsin, certainly a degree confluence if I ever heard of one.
ReplyDeleteExcellent. Geological marker photo here:
Deletehttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/2009-0620-45x90-Lies1.jpg
The first question that occurs to me is "Why?". Sure, there may be interesting and even important stories about lots of the places at these whole-number intersections, but lots of them, if not thousands of them, are likely to be as unremarkable as the scene in the photo that appears above. And by creating what is basically another version of GoogleEarth's places of interest, thousands of places of astonishing beauty or historical interest which don't happen to occur at these intersections will be missed? I don't get it.
ReplyDeleteSeveral answers to your question are offered in their FAQ:
Deletehttp://www.confluence.org/faq.php#FBD16432