Engineer’s office creates new Columbia Co. map

The mapping information can be used electronically.

By D.A. WILKINSON

VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU

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.

Should someone be interested in underground water sources, that information can be layered with the map information to show where the water is located.

Dawson and Durbin credited Jackie Shreeve, who works in Dawson’s office, for much of the work.

Shreeve also took the photo that adorns the cover of the paper maps. It shows one of the old county bridges that the engineer’s office maintains.

The engineer’s office used state maps, old county maps and tax maps to help make the new one. The office staff looked at the names, possible colors and other information .

“We all kept looking at it, and tweaked it,” Dawson said.

The new maps reflect the recent growth in Salem, Columbiana, and the Glenmoor shopping area in the southern portion of the county.

But the maps offer a ton of information: guides to the county’s covered bridges, access points to the Greenway walking and biking trail, the county’s historical markers and cemeteries, icons showing the location of parks, schools, pools, playgrounds, stadiums and township halls, as well as the many governmental agencies that have sprung up around the county.

Maps of communities — big and small — are on the back of the map. One nifty feature is that the maps name and show the locations of condominiums in communities. Salem lists 16 condominiums alone.

Maps are available at the engineer’s office for $1.50 each.

wilkinson@vindy.com