Mapping Erasure

A Historical GIS of Place, Uncertainty,
and Archival Absence in the Panama Canal Zone

A map of the settlements, and the places within them, that were flooded, depopulated, relocated, or renamed during the construction of the canal, and of what now stands on the same ground.

view ?
?
time 1900 ? ?
showing ?
filter by ? ?

Legend: ?
Colour — this view:
Geometry — every view:
striped area = uncertain, drawn at its stated radius
filled area = extent on record (overlaps freely)
dashed symbol = located, but no extent recorded (fixed size, not an area)
hollow rings joined by a line = sources disagree; all claims plotted
Time:
faint = claimed for this year, but no source is dated to it
dotted ring = removed by this year, still shown as a trace
present-day (extant), drawn beneath the historical symbols
Sources: ?
select a source to see only the places it records, ordered from earliest to latest
Unlocated places: ?
documented in the sources but never assigned coordinates, so listed here rather than plotted
Located places:
places with coordinates, plotted at the selected scale, ordered from oldest founding to youngest; select one to open its record on the map
The archives behind the sources: ?
every archive in the corpus, grouped by its side of the colonial relationship, with what each holds and how much of it can be searched remotely
As of September 2026: every archive in this corpus that can be fully searched remotely is either a record of the colonial power itself, or a Caribbean record hosted by a United States university. The Panamanian archives serve catalog metadata only, and the West Indian registers of the Silver Men have not been digitized anywhere. That asymmetry is itself part of the record of erasure.
Archives of the colonial power
Archives of the colonized

How to read this map

Using the controls:
1
Choose a view; each one colours the same places by a different question.
2
Move the time slider, or press Play, to step through 1850–2025 year by year; Play slows down through the construction decade, where most of the change happens. The map opens on Everything located, which ignores time; pressing Play or moving the slider switches to the timeline.
3
Click any place, on the map or in either place panel, to open its record card; the selected place turns red on the map. Drag the card by its title bar to move it aside; close it with the ×, Escape, or a double-click outside it (a single click will not close it).
4
Type in the find box to search both place panels by any name the sources record, so a renamed place can still be found under its earlier name.
5
The showing switch sets whether the whole page lists top-level places or the buildings & infrastructure recorded within them. The filter menus narrow this down; sources disagree keeps only contested locations, and american origin fills the ICC-built Gold and Silver Roll townsites in solid red.
6
In the Sources panel, click a source to redraw the map with only the places that source records. The Sources and Located panels can be sorted by date or A–Z.
7
Each ? explains the reasoning behind a design choice. The page address records the current state of the display, so it can be copied to cite a particular view.
The map symbols:

Shape shows how confidently a place is located; colour depends on the current view; opacity shows the state of the evidence for the selected year; places that are absent from the record are still shown as such. Fixed-size symbols do not represent distance on the ground.

1A precisely located feature, drawn as a solid point.
2The same symbol, faint: the place is claimed to exist in this year, but no dated source covers it.
3An extent drawn at the radius its source states, translucent so that neighbouring extents can overlap.
4A striped area: the place lay somewhere within it, but its position is only loosely known.
5A dashed symbol of fixed size: located, but with no extent on record.
6Hollow rings joined by a line: sources place the same feature differently, so every claim is plotted and none is chosen.
7A dotted ring: removed by the year on the slider, but still shown as a trace. Dotted outlines are only used for removed places.
8A dashed halo: an unlocated place that the sources tie to the located place it surrounds.
9Solid red, with the american origin switch on: an ICC-built Gold or Silver Roll townsite, in any view. A red outline alone marks whichever place's record card is currently open.
The record card:
1Place name CZ-###
2scale · place type · theme · part of a parent place
3~1890-1913spatial: Lowabsence statuscommunitywarnings, in red
4at 1910what the slider year means for this place
5Location:
how its shape was drawn, and from what
6Names as recorded:
1907Earliest name 3 sources, first: where it appears
1912A later name the source that renamed it
7Relations:
1906-13part of / near / replaced by another place
8Features within this town (n):
Buildinga hospital, a camp, a roundhouse… each linked to its own record
9Sources (n, across m mentions):
×4Source title (origin; kind of record; ×4 = mentions it 4 times)
10Searched, absent in (n):
A source that was searched and does not mention it (origin)
1The place and its ID in the dataset.
2The kind of place, its scale, and the place it belongs to.
3Lifespan, how confidently it is located, its absence status, and whom it housed (Gold or Silver Roll, Panamanian village, or mixed). Red chips are warnings.
4What the year on the slider means for this place: attested, only claimed, before its founding, or after its removal. This updates as the slider moves.
5Where its map shape comes from: a stated radius, an extent traced from a map, competing claims, or "no coordinates on record."
6Each distinct name the sources use, earliest first, since renaming is part of these places' history.
7Dated links to other places in the model.
8The buildings, camps and institutions recorded inside a town, each linking to its own record; a feature's card links back to its town.
9One line per source that mentions it; the heading gives the number of sources and the total mentions across them.
10Sources that were searched for this place and do not mention it. That absence is recorded on purpose, not left as a gap.