From Whence We Came

Mapping wayyyy back in the old pre-GIS days of 2001

This was the state of the art for mapping at our company before I started nearly 5 years ago. They had just bought ArcView 3.2 but did not know how to use it.
I was cleaning out some old papers and came across this map which I thought might be of particular interest to those returning from the dazziling displays of GIS magic demo-ed at the ESRI User Conference.
When I started working for Plateau Land & Wildlife in Sept 2001, I brought my GPS for a grand company total of 2 GPS units. Maps were being made in one of 3 ways:

1. Placing dots & lines on topos in 3D Topoquads and then copying the image into Word to add legends and further annotations
2. Drawing on transperancy sheets over topo maps -OR-
3. Sending a hand drawn or 3D Topomap to a contractor who recreated it in ArcView and then sent it to us as a *.jpg

It’s amazing to me how far we as a company have come in terms of using GIS for our work and how throughly it is integrated into our workflows. Now we are anxiously awaiting the release of ArcGIS Explorer so that even traditionally non-GIS using employees can have access to simple GIS and map making capabilities. I can’t imagine going back to the pre-GIS times at our company and being very effecient or profience at what we do.I’d love to hear of anyone else’s similar experinces.