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During the fur trade period and over the years since that time many maps have been produced showing the locations of trading posts. Each map is important and provides information about the site or the author, although in numerous cases the maps have errors when compared to present day knowledge of geography and other records of the fur trade. Two Canadian authors stand out for their large collection of trading post sites: E. Voorhis in 1930 and T. B. Smythe in 1968.
In June 2005, Andreas Korsos of Edmonton introduced a thoroughly contemporary map of Canada and the northern United States showing 1,200 North American fur trade post sites. The map is large, 36" x 48", of very high quality colour printing with accurate geographical features and has twice the number of posts compared to Voorhis's map. Fittingly, Korsos unveiled his map and described his ten years of research at a meeting of the David Thompson Bi-Centennial Committee in Jasper, Alberta. All of a sudden the fur trade history community has a wonderful potential new resource for many avenues of research.
Enthusiasm for this new map is well founded because it is supported by a modern Geographical Information System (GIS) and computer aided cartography. By-products of the GIS will be the map itself, a web site for detailed information on each post, flexibility to produce regional maps with finer detail, and an atlas of the North American fur trade.
Andy Korsos was raised in south central British Columbia and now resides in Edmonton, Alberta. He currently works for a municipality in charge of their mapping and GIS. Korsos has been a cartographer for 18 years and has worked for provincial and municipal governments as well as private industry. His experience includes...