A new website is now available that provides digital navigation data for use on Stillwater Reservoir. In light of how imprecise previous maps were, and suffering several destroyed boat props, the website author was motivated to start this project. The project began with the program Google Earth, and historical imagery from November 9, 2011 and October 11, 2008. In this imagery, the water elevation was approximately 1668 and 1670 feet respectively. This is approximately 7-10 ft below the typical summer month water elevations. Since then, other offline sources of imagery with lower water levels have been located including aerial photography and video during the draw down of the reservoir in 2001.
The results of this work are four data layers, detailed below.
- The “Routes” layer contains “educated guess” safe routes for motor boats.
- The “Hazards” layer contains polygon data encompassing shoals that were visible in the low elevation map data, but were at least partially covered in high water conditions. The hazards are also available as three dimensional polygons, for viewing on top of the image overlay layers.
- The “Campsites” layer contains the approximate locations of all forty-six designated camp sites on the reservoir. For more campsite information, go here.
- The “Image Overlays” layer provides three categories of images, accurately laid over the underlying satellite imagery in Google Earth.
- drawn maps found online provided by state and county governments
- topographical maps found online
- examples of offline ortho-imagery (satellite images) used to create this project
The website also contains step-by-step guides for loading the map data onto mobile devices. Whether it’s an Android or Apple, phone or tablet; a mobile device and the data on this site can be utilized to navigate and avoid most dangers on the reservoir.
Link: https://sites.google.com/site/stillwaterreservoirnavigation