D.C. Water Atlas

This atlas shows the development of Washington D.C.'s water system.

Here is a quote from the atlas page on Dumbarton Oaks, the project's host institution.

As in so many other cities, water is everywhere in Washington, D.C.—and yet it remains largely invisible to most of us, taken for granted or ignored. But D.C.’s waterways and plumbing shape the civic, social, and even commercial lives of its residents just as much now as in the past: the Anacostia, the Potomac, the C&O Canal, Rock Creek. And the crisis in Flint, Michigan, has shown that the questions of where and how cities find their water have tremendous importance for public health, down to the last pipe.  

Unlike many modern web maps, this one is refreshingly free of the usual over-reliance on interactivity. Most of the maps are a simple click or two away. The menu at the top shows the options.

You can also hover over different areas on the main map to get these options.

After choosing an option, there are sub-maps that can be chosen such as this one for the City Canal.

These sub-maps are simple (not interactive) maps with an information panel in the upper left and the year depicted shown at the bottom. The author, John Dean Davis, scanned a series of historical maps and overlaid them onto the modern city. He included some nice details such as the campus of Dumbarton Oaks.

I'm not sure I would have chosen the blueprint color scheme for these maps. Some of the information is a hard to read but it does make for a nice effect and ties the maps together visually.

To explore this further go to the online atlas.