Tour the U.S. World Heritage Sites

Take the Seven Wonders of the World, expand the list and you get the World Heritage sites. A United Nations creation from the 1960s, there are now over 1,000 of these sites all over the world. In the United States there have been 23 locations ratified since the 1970s, all shown on the map below.

View World Heritage Sites in the United States in a full screen map

An impressive 21 states are represented amongst the 23 locations, taking into account that some are shared among multiple states. Yellowstone, for example, covers areas of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Great Smoky Mountains are in both Tennessee and North Carolina. New Mexico has the most of any state with three: Chaco Culture National Historic Park, Taos Pueblo, and Carlsbad Caverns.

World Heritage sites are chosen by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The US spurred the process originally, calling for a “World Heritage Trust” in 1965. The project became a reality in 1972, with the first US sites chosen in the late 1970s. Worldwide, there are 962 sites, including cultural sites like the Taj Mahal and natural sites like the Serengeti National Park.

Cultural vs Natural

The broad criteria for inclusion as a World Heritage site is that a place must have natural or cultural significance. A site must meet at least one of ten criteria, and nations nominate from their own tentative lists. Interestingly, a site may be considered both cultural and natural. These “mixed” sites account for a very small number (just 29) worldwide. Most sites are cultural (745), which indicates they’re likely man-made. Only 19% (188 sites) are natural.

In the US, the split is much more even—in fact, there are more natural than cultural. You can use BatchGeo’s grouping feature on the map above to display the 12 natural and 10 cultural sites. That just covers 22 of the 23. The other one, Papahānaumokuākea, is a mixed site in Hawaii and minor outlying islands.

The earliest World Heritage sites in the US to join the list were Yellowstone (Natural) and Mesa Verde (Cultural). Four others followed the next year, including the Grand Canyon. The most recent, the San Antonio Missions, was added in 2015. More are likely coming: there are still 11 sites on the US tentative list, including Petrified Forest National Park and Mount Vernon, the plantation home of the much-homaged George Washington.

Mapping Local Crime Data Online

When Google Maps was released in 2005, one of the first projects to use it externally was ChicagoCrime.org. Though now defunct, the site was built when the hard way to add Google Maps was even harder. It inspired many other community crime maps, and won a Knight-Batten award for innovation in journalism in 2005. Since that time many newspapers have replaced the traditional police blotter with the much more visual map, as you’ll see in these examples below.

Readers use crime maps in many different ways. Some will want to check for incidents in their immediate neighborhood, with most police data reported at the block level. Others will be interested in a larger neighborhood area or the city as a whole. Since most police data is segmented by type, readers may also want to see which incidents are thefts, burglary, or other types of crime.

Example Newspaper Crime Maps

Many newspapers have maps of recent crimes that staff keep updated on their websites. These can be used by both readers and journalists as the seed for future stories.

Evansville Courier and Press

The Evansville Courier and Press in Indiana maintains an impressive daily crime map built with BatchGeo. Each incident includes the address, case number, date, type of incident, and the department that reported it (typically the Evansville Police).

Anniston Star

The Anniston Star of Alabama regularly updates its map of recent crimes, and it lets readers group by the date of the crime. This powerful grouping and filtering feature comes with all BatchGeo accounts, no special coding required.

Milwaukee Community Newspapers

Milwaukee’s Community NOW newspapers are reaching BatchGeo power user status with their frequently updated map. The incident reports can be filtered by incident type, which allows readers and journalists to focus on specific types of crimes.

These are just a handful of crime maps created with BatchGeo. One of the reasons we’re a popular solution is that it’s very easy to create your own.

How to Create a Crime Map

We’ve designed BatchGeo to make map making as easy as copy and paste. Crime maps are the same. Here’s how you can make your own:

  1. Find a data source – This may be the hardest part, but your city should have a way to access police reports. This is very likely open data, after all.
  2. Store your data in a spreadsheet – You should be able to download as Excel or CSV, as is an option in the popular Socrata government datasets. Alternatively, you may be able to copy from a table on the web into a spreadsheet.
  3. Paste the data into BatchGeo – Once your data is in a spreadsheet, it’s ready for BatchGeo. Just copy and paste to make a map from your Excel spreadsheet.
  4. Embed the map in your website (optional) – As with the newspapers mentioned above, embedding maps in your own website helps you control the user experience and looks professional.

Crime is just one of the ways journalists use BatchGeo. Every map tells a story, start telling yours now.

Put Little Debbie on the Map

Little Debbie Star CrunchIf you’re anything like us, you imagine maps everywhere. There really is no better way to visualize geographic data. In your Excel spreadsheets, or hiding in plain sight on Wikipedia, many stories are best told with a map.

This is one of them.

What’s This Have to Do With Little Debbie?

Recently a friend from Portland, Oregon, got back from visiting family on the east coast. He came to visit and brought Star Crunch cookies, a snack made by Little Debbie. It was his childhood favorite, but he hadn’t found it out west. He’d stocked up while back home.

The next day, I discovered the Snack Finder on Little Debbie’s website. I plugged in a Portland zip code and discovered several places that sell Star Crunch, in a long list of store names and addresses.

Star Crunch store list

That’s the perfect opportunity for a BatchGeo map. Three copy-pastes later (I decided to look up the 12 pack, single Star Crunch, and the Big Pack), I had a beautiful, browsable map. This gave him a way to visualize just how close he was to his favorite childhood cookie.

View Portland-area Star Crunch in a full screen map

I simply texted the link to him, with no other information. He was surely impressed, but probably as much due to BatchGeo’s mobile-optimized maps as the answer to his sweet tooth.

Do the Same With Any List of Locations

This isn’t just a story about finding cookies. While these treats are delicious, you’ll find tasty stories everywhere as you browse the Internet. You just need to look for them. You will find data in all sorts of formats, but many will copy-paste nicely into BatchGeo. Check out our open data tutorial for an example of just how easy it can be.

You can use BatchGeo to visualize the data you find. When you plot it on a map, you’re telling a story. Use the maps in a blog post, create a store locator, or just share it with a friend.

Of course, a BatchGeo doesn’t just plot a bunch of marker pins on a map and stop there. Any additional data becomes available within each marker’s info box. And that same data can be grouped or you can create cluster maps to bubble up important insights within the data.

Don’t let your story go untold. Create a BatchGeo map now for free.