Misplaced Histories: The history beneath your feet

Misplaced
Histories

Tap any place. Hear its history.

Stories drawn from newspapers, government records, and archives, narrated for wherever you're standing.

Indigenous land, deep geology, mill towns, forgotten lives. Written from the record, with sources shown.

It's a web app, best experienced on your phone.
Works on desktop too.
Not ready for a beta? Get notified at launch.

Misplaced Histories story map
Stories from the app

Narrated stories with original illustrations. Preview one below.

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It Works Anywhere

Any place, anywhere.

A parking lot in Tulsa. A cornfield in Pennsylvania. A street corner in New Orleans. The trailhead where you always park. The town square you drove through once. The highway that used to be something else.
The app finds what the record says about it.
How It Works
01

Find where you are

Your location is matched against public historical sources:

  • ✓ Library of Congress, Chronicling America (historic newspapers, 1770–1963)
  • ✓ National Register of Historic Places (National Park Service)
  • ✓ USGS Geographic Names Information System
  • ✓ OpenStreetMap
  • ✓ Wikipedia

Source references on every story are in development.

Map view showing nearby historical stories

Nearby stories

02

Search the record

The app selects the most specific, overlooked material it can find for that spot and writes it into a short narrative. The writing is done by AI from those sources.

Story detail view

Begin the telling

03

Hear the story

A narrator reads the story aloud, and an illustration accompanies it. The illustrations are artwork inspired by the story, not photographs of the place. Every story you open stays on your map.

The Last University of a Dying Territory
The Historian Who Wrote in the Dark
The Town That Waited Two Centuries
The Pier That Named a City Block
The Carousel That Lit the Match

A different story for every place

One App. Two Worlds.

Told for adults, and told for kids.

The same places and the same sources, told for who's listening.

For adults

The Full Story

The full story, including the hard parts: conquest, loss, contested accounts, local legend, and deep time. Complex and layered, the way the record actually is.

Full narrative depth. All 12 story categories.

For kids

Wonder First

The same sources, told for younger listeners: shorter stories, present tense, framed as discovery. Kids deserve to know who and what came before them.

Age-appropriate. Shorter stories. Same sources.

Where We're Headed

What we're building.

We're in beta. Subscription revenue goes back into the product.

Phase 1 Now

ROAM Mode

Tap any place on earth and hear its story, read aloud and illustrated. Your map fills in as you explore.

Phase 2 In development

SEEK Mode

Hands-free. Stories play about the places you pass as you drive or walk.

Phase 3 Next

Featured Collections

Stories from museums, archives, and historical societies, told in the institution's own words, credited and linked back to them. Each institution approves its stories before they go live.

Phase 4 Planned

Community Memories

People who live somewhere know things no archive does. Community Memories lets residents submit their own memories of a place. Each one is reviewed before it joins the record, credited or anonymous.

A single place holds many stories. Most of us inherit one or two. Layering them is the point.

What you would hear

One place.
Many stories.

Choose the categories you want. The more you choose, the more the app finds.

Beta Access

Free during beta.

Be Part of Building This

There's more here
than the marker says.

Go find out what's beneath your feet.

Get the App →

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