Ashland Township, located in Newaygo County, Michigan has three cemeteries, a larger township cemetery, and two smaller cemeteries, Danish Lutheran and Shippy Cemeteries. The township clerk was looking for a new way to manage the cemeteries instead of photocopied drafts and old, fragile drawings of the cemeteries’ layouts. The copies were large, heavily marked up, and difficult for the public to access and use. Ashland Township was looking into a solutions that would work for township officials and help the public access records. Using the paper maps and existing spreadsheet data provided by the township, digital maps of the cemeteries sections, plots, and roads were created, and pictures of its statues and headstones. All of the data and spatial location data was verified on the ground and corrections made and discrepancies noted. Once all the corrections were made and the data was approved by the township, the data, shapefiles and pictures were provided to the township and online maps were created and hosted by a neighboring county’s GIS department.

The Ashland Township Cemetery Maps were created by the West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission’s GIS Program for Ashland Township, Newaygo County, Michigan. All cemetery data and shapefiles are the property of Ashland Township. Created in Fall 2016. To learn more about WMSRDC’s GIS Services visit www.WMSRDC.org