Every claim in this atlas carries a grade: how sure the record is, and why. This is the difference between what a town remembers and what it can prove, published instead of hidden.
The atlas currently holds 620 claims about places, events, and people, and every one is graded on a five-rung ladder. 472 are strong: multi-source consensus or canonical institutional record. 88 are plausible, 43 anecdotal, 16 unresolved.
And the top rung, verified, primary source confirmed with the archive citation in hand, currently holds 0. The standard is deliberately stricter than the archive's best current evidence. An empty top rung is not a failure; it is a bar.
The rungs are earned with sources. An anecdotal claim carries on average 1.0 source: someone said so, and the record partially agrees. A plausible claim carries 2.7. Above that, the difference stops being arithmetic: strong requires consensus or first-person testimony, and verified will require the primary document itself.
verified · primary-source confirmed, archive citation in hand
strong · multi-source consensus; first-person testimony; canonical record
plausible · one credible source plus circumstantial corroboration
anecdotal · oral tradition, partially in the published record
unresolved · asserted but unverified; research priority
These 16 claims are the archive's published gaps, named on the chart exactly as they stand in the record right now. A ballroom on Main Beach. A fire station. A park. The origin of the Chamber of Commerce. Each is asserted by someone credible and proven by no one yet.
The record also keeps its scars: 5 claims are marked deprecated and retained rather than deleted, because real places exist regardless of editorial decisions, and 1 pin still carries a label from an older grading system, awaiting migration. The audit trail is part of the standard.
Here is the whole archive at once, one dot per claim, shaded by how hard it has been proven. Most of the field is dark: this record stands mostly on multiple sources. The faint dots are the frontier. If you know something about one of them, the archive is listening; a memory, a photograph, a receipt from a closed restaurant is exactly how a faint dot darkens.
As of this reading, the archive holds 620 claims; 472 are strong; none has yet earned verified. When the first claim reaches the top rung, this sentence will change on its own.