NS Marks The Spot is a Nova Scotia map for property research and local history. Search a parcel by PID, civic address, or postal community, read dated municipal tax-sale notices against live parcel geometry, switch on provincial reference layers, and slide Hugh Fletcher's 1880s geological sheets over today's landscape.
Where it stands
The current product focus is the browser map, live at /apps/nsmarksthespot/map/. It runs on any phone, tablet, or desktop with nothing to install. Optional live location draws the position this device reports in the browser and keeps that reading on-device. The native iPhone app is a separate offline and field companion with internal TestFlight builds; it is not on the App Store.
What the map does
- Parcel search: Enter an eight-digit PID or a Nova Scotia civic address, or tap a visible parcel, and open its provincial boundary in context. Search also recognizes postal communities; a postal candidate becomes selectable only when it resolves to one live provincial civic point. When matched, the parcel inspector can show a separately labelled mailing address from Statistics Canada's free National Address Register (June 2026), distinct from the provincial civic address. Boundaries are approximate context, never a legal survey.
- Tax-sale notices: Municipal tax-sale listings are catalogued as dated snapshots, each pinned to its notice and source document, and mapped against live parcel geometry. No owner names are shown. The Nova Scotia Tax Sale Hub keeps the posted dates in one place.
- Reference layers: Provincial aerial imagery, property boundaries, Crown land, flood-risk areas, water, roads, contours, geology and mineral records, well-water screening zones, and municipal zoning where a municipality publishes it — each with its own source, licence gate, and attribution.
- Historical sheets: Twenty-four Fletcher sheets, independently georeferenced from David Rumsey Map Collection scans, sit as an optional overlay with an opacity control. A sheet can sit a few hundred metres off modern ground, and the layer says so; it is context, not evidence.
- Live location: Optional live location places you on the same map — the reading stays in that browser.
- Your maps: Import a GeoPDF, GeoTIFF, shapefile, or GeoJSON and keep it on your device. Nothing is uploaded.
- Exports: Print a PDF map or export a source-linked evidence note for a parcel.
Every slider pull is a little time travel
Fade between the old survey and the current map to trace where a road bent, where a shoreline shifted, or where a name survived. The old sheets mark what today's maps forgot — gold mines, foundries, schools — sitting close to where they used to be under the modern roads and woods.
Built in the open
The code is public on GitHub under the MIT licence, structured around a map-engine boundary so the interface can stay steady while the renderer evolves. Map imagery keeps its own licences and attribution, layer by layer.
Open Online Map | Nova Scotia Tax Sale Hub | Project Site | View Source Code on GitHub | Get Help & Support