SW038: Military Marcher Maps Full 1835 Major Dade Route on Fort King Road and Then Some

[Editor's Note: This is the 10th in a series of podcasts over the coming weeks promoting the Seminole Wars Foundation's self-paced virtual challenge, The Major Dade Memorial March to Fort King. We launched Dec. 22. Registration to join Laumer's Legion is still open. Visit www.seminolewars.us for details.]

Courtesy photo of Jerry Morris holding part of a Gunter's Chain

It wasn't enough for ex-paratrooper Jerry Morris to march 60 miles with Laumer's Legion in 1988, retracing the 1835 route of Major Dade's fateful march to massacre. He wanted to "finish the march" continuing another 40 miles north from the Dade Battlefield Historic State Park to re-created Fort King in Ocala. Told no one has re-mapped that route from the old 1840s survey maps, Jerry replied, "Then I'll do it." And so he did. Many years and a collaboration with Geospatial Imager Jeff Hough later, they published The Fort King Road: Then and Now. The unspoken question gnaws at us, though. How did they do it then and now. 

 

In this episode, Jerry Morris explains the ins and outs of surveying in the 1600s and 1700s with so-called Gunter Chains, named for its inventor. He then recalls just what it took to assess the old survey maps -- spot check their accuracy with these Gunter Chains -- and overlap aerial photographs and satellite imagery to produce a highly accurate representation of the old Fort King Military Road. 

Host Patrick Swan is a board member with the Seminole Wars Foundation. He is a combat veteran and of the U.S. Army, serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Kosovo, and at the Pentagon after 9/11. A military historian, he holds masters degrees in Public History, Communication, and Homeland Security, and is a graduate of the US Army War College with an advanced degree in strategic studies. This podcast is recorded at the homestead of the Seminole Wars Foundation in Bushnell, Florida. 

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