By Aimee Trehey

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Stephen Hanna

Abstract

Wayside panels and other public historic markers are often overlooked, but important tools that help to shape public understandings of a place. Geographers and other academics have studied these markers and different means of analyzing them. This study uses data collected from comprehensive catalogs of historic markers across the Fredericksburg area from 2014, 2017, and 2024, analyzed using ArcGIS Pro’s spatial statistics tools. In order to understand change in the landscape, this study uses spatial statistics to identify and analyze important clusters of markers in Fredericksburg. In particular, this study looks at changes in topics and depictions of autonomy as presented on markers to see how emphasis on certain topics has changed over the past decade.