This database stores permanent outdoors historical markers and commemorative plaques. It does not store memorial markers, gravestones, or historical sites. You will find photographs of memorial markers, gravestones and historical sites in this database, but they are shown because a historical marker or commemorative plaque pointed them out. No marker, no listing.

	By Tom Fuchs, January 7, 2006
	Historic Boundary Marker and Historical Marker

Here's the rule: Marker must be outdoors, must be permanent, and must state at least one historical or scientific fact beyond names and dates.

A commemorative plaque that says “John Smith, 1580–1631” does not qualify for inclusion. But these two additional words, for example, would be all that would be needed to qualify: “John Smith, 1580–1631, lived here.” This works too: “John Smith, 1580–1631, is buried here.” These do not “John Smith, 1580–1631, rest in peace” or “In Memory of John Smith, 1580–1631.”

A distinction is made between a marker with historical significance—such as an old boundary marker—and a marker that has an inscription that describes the un-allowed marker with the historical significance. In this example, this historical boundary stone got included in the database because it had a historical plaque sitting next to it. The first marker in this example, the boundary stone, would not be allowed into the database. The second marker in this example would. And because the second marker is allowed, its entry can contain photos, descriptions and commentaries about the first.

An exception is made for war memorials. Many simply list names, with no additional historical fact. These will be allowed in the database. The majority of grave markers are not allowed, no matter how historic, because they state no historical fact beyond name and dates, and because there are so many they would overwhelm the database.

A photograph of the marker or plaque is almost always required. The marker may no longer be there, but if you have a photograph of a marker that was, then it will be accepted into the database. Proof of existence other than a photograph may be acceptable, at the discretion of the editor.

All markers must have map coordinates (latitude and longitude) before they are published. If you can't provide it, an editor will have to find the coordinates from the location information you supply. So please be very specific as to where your marker is including which side of the road or which corner of the intersection.

Also see Typographic Guidelines.

This site has been designed and implemented and is maintained after-hours and off-the-clock. Advertising on this site is limited to Google and History Channel ads outside of the right-hand margin, and links to Amazon.com books. This revenue is used to offset the cost of maintaining the site. No other advertising is used. This site does not launch pop-up or pop-under ads, your browsing is not tracked, and we won’t sell or give your name or email to anyone.

This site is designed for recent versions of both Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and the Mozilla Firefox browsers. It should also display well on other browsers, and on earlier versions. But the only testing that is done is on the two browsers mentioned. Pages are rendered in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) with the occasional bit of JavaScript to move things along.

The pages are Active Server Pages (ASP) written in Visual Basic Script (vbScript) that run on a Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). The vbScript code issues Standard Query Language (SQL) statements to the database, which has been implemented on a Microsoft SQL Server. Using the information fetched from the database, the code composes the HTML text that is transmitted to your browser for display. Photographs are uploaded, resized, rotated, cropped and stored with Persits Software’s AspUpload and AspJpeg components for IIS. The subscription feed is an Xtensible Markup Language (XML) page coded in Really Simple Syndication (RSS) protocol. This site is currently running on a Dell server.

	By Tom Fuchs, January 7, 2006
	Rockville Marker This image is shown 400 pixels tall.

Main Marker Table Database Fields. Some of these fields are for internal use. Others can be populated with the Add-A-Marker forms.

Search Button. All text fields in the Main Marker Table records are indexed daily at 2 AM North American Eastern Time by the Microsoft Full-Text Index Service for linguistically-based searches that is provided with the SQL Server license. Since the Search button is searching the index and not the database itself, results are fast. But because the index is updated only once a day, new markers and additional information added today will not be found by searching until tomorrow. Another limitation of the system is that it can only search one table at a time. This means that text in photo captions, links, and comments are not indexed. This is also why the search button does not find contributor's names.

Layout.The layout of the marker pages has been automated so that the same ASP page displays all markers, regardless of text length, information present or missing, and the number and dimensions of the photographs. Photographs are interspersed with the text and any remaining photographs are shown in pairs below the text. The Editor tags each photograph with a sequence number that determines the order of display on the page.

Two copies of each uploaded photograph are stored in the database: the original as uploaded, and a smaller copy no larger than 400 pixels on its longest dimension. The smaller copy is used for faster display on the marker page. The full-size copy is accessible by clicking on the smaller image.

The width of the text area is 700 pixels. The smaller copies of the photographs that are interspersed with the text are shown full-size, that being no wider or no taller than 400 pixels. They are alternately placed right, then left. The alternating placement continues until the text is exhausted. If any photographs remain, they are resized in the browser to no more than 300 pixels wide so they can be placed side-by-side in pairs. The final photograph, if unpaired, is centered full size at the bottom of the page.

Mapping. The marker location algorithm has been designed to put as little strain on the SQL Server as possible This is done by first “drawing” a square with edges approximately 10 miles in each of the cardinal directions from the current marker to initially select only other markers that are inside the square. Then the more time-consuming Spherical Law of Cosines is used to obtain the distance to only the markers found within the square. Using the calculated distances, the nearest 5 markers are selected. All this is done, without looping, in a single SQL Select statement: The square is “drawn” in the Where clause with a pair of Between predicates, the cosine calculation is performed in the Select list and an Order By sort with a Top 5 keyword delivers the recordset. Because we made it easier for the computer by using a square rather than a circle, some markers near the corners of the square that are further than 10 miles away may make the top 5 list.

The maps themselves are courtesy of Google Maps and their Javascript Application Programming Interface.

Linking Information for Webmasters. You are encouraged to link directly to any page on the site. When markers pages are updated their ID may change. But you can link to specific marker pages with confidence because IDs are not reused and a Redirect will be left behind on the old page so that the correct page will automatically display.

While it is not considered good form, you may source your image tags to our server. But when you do, remember that you must also display the photographer’s name and the date of the photo, when shown; and this web site. For example use this format in small type,