Columbiana County has new map

LISBON — The Columbiana County Engineer’s Office has created a new map with multiple uses that it can call its own.

County Engineer Bert Dawson said the county has the copyright to the new map he unveiled last week.

That means educators and others who may want to use portions of the map won’t have to ask a private firm for permission to use the information.

Dawson said the project began when he realized that the old county map listed the names of county commissioners long gone from office.

Work to creating the new map took “a couple of years, off and on,” Dawson said.

Back in the 1930s, the state map of the county, and the county’s own map, “pretty much had the same information,” the engineer said.

Former county Engineer John Ursu updated the county map in the 1960s. The county, as did most Ohio companies, worked with a private company that kept the copyrights.

Dawson said that people who asked the company for permission to use the map often got no response. The county now does business with another company, Techna-Graphics in Washington, D.C., that printed 10,000 new maps.

People who want to use the map can fill out a form at the engineer’s office.

Robert Durbin, Dawson’s chief deputy, said the map information is computerized. Multiple layers of information can be added, such as natural-gas transmission lines, railroad lines, or coal deposits.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com.