About Adventures in Place (AiP)

Place is more than the backdrop to a story. Geography can be evidence. Adventures in Place uses historical maps, GIS, georeferencing, LiDAR, imagery, field observation, and other spatial tools to locate, reconstruct, test, and better understand stories tied to the landscape.

AiP looks for the stories hidden in ordinary landscapes: what happened here, what used to be here, why the landscape looks the way it does, and how a place has changed over time. Along the way, AiP distinguishes documented facts from interpretation and uncertainty.

AiP isn’t intended to be the final word on every subject. The goal is to make interesting stories approachable, show where they happened, and point curious readers toward the sources and people who can take them deeper.

Explore AiP’s Interactive Atlas to discover stories geographically, see how places connect, and find other stories hiding nearby.

Adventures in Place begins close to home. Most AiP stories currently come from northeastern Wisconsin, where I live and where much of my own exploring and research takes place. But the idea isn’t limited to one corner of Wisconsin.

Over time, I hope to expand AiP into more places and more kinds of stories. I’m also interested in collaborating with historians, researchers, geologists, GIS professionals, photographers, local experts, and simply curious people who know a place and its stories.

If you know of a place worth investigating, have information that could strengthen an existing story, or would like to help build Adventures in Place, I’d love to hear from you.