I working on a history of then Pacific Northwest. My goal is to display dynamic time series maps of the creation/presence/growth of various towns, their population size, railroad line tracks laid, church foundings, industries' arrival, timber logged, etc.
My data set will be simple SQLite tables with fields like:
- Location - County or Town (obviously some relational tie to geo coordinates and boundaries)
- Year
- Category (population, church, RR arrival, etc.)
- Quantity (for those categories where this applies, eg. population, or lumber produced)
I want to generate clean, simple maps with WA, OR, ID road or terrain backgrounds and whatever data set and symbols I select for any point in time.
My skills are limited. I'm not looking to be GIS specialist. I'm an advanced beginner in Python/Pandas and R. My preference is MAC but I can use Wintel-only too.
I welcome suggestions comparatively easy to adopt and use for the above modest goals FREEWARE.