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Make a vintage basemap in ArcGIS Pro with some Living Atlas shenanigans

By John Nelson

Here’s how to stack up some tile layers and blend them up to concoct a basemap that wouldn’t look out of place in 1890. Except that you wouldn’t have anywhere to plug in your monitor so it would be hard to show it to people back then. Ok bring a small generator. Wait, all these layers are sourced from Living Atlas, which didn’t exist in 1890, so how are we going to serve up the tiles? Ok, let’s say we print out a hard copy of this basemap, bring it back to 1890, and show it to some folks. Are they going to think it came from the future? I don’t think so. Unless you showed it to a professional printer and they’d be peering closely at the laser printed ink and wondering what sort of newfangled lithography you wielded. Anyway, let’s just say it looks old fashioned to us now, and forget about the whole time travel question. Plus, imagine the alternate universe you’d spin off if you were to take this map back to 1890. The unfathomable (wink) bathymetry! The impossible terrain knowledge! And say, what are those borders and country names? What are the Hapsburgs going to say about this!! And so on.

Oh, right, the how-to video. Here it is…

Maybe you’re all, “that’s cool and all, but why doesn’t he just give me the Pro package so I can just, like, have it.” Ok here’s that: https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=e0ac394679a14389b9ad7cd0807f968f

Here are some examples…

Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles. Click to embiggen.
Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles.
Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles.
Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles.
Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles.
Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles.
Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles.
Vintage style basemap for ArcGIS Pro using Living Atlas tiles.

Love, John

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