[9] The OpenHistoricalMap domain name was purchased in 2009,[10] and an initial fork of the OpenStreetMap website software was deployed there in 2013.

[3][11] In 2015, the similarly named OpenHistoryMap project was founded to promote sharing of archaeological and historical data according to an open access model.

However, it has a peer review process,[12] which is distinct from the OpenHistoricalMap and OpenStreetMap projects' focus on volunteered geographic information.

[4] In 2016, OpenHistoricalMap suffered a hard disk drive failure but managed to recover most data from a backup that a contributor had made by chance.

[13][14] In 2018, longtime host Topomancy shut down and transferred ownership of the OpenHistoricalMap domain to the Wikiwar Heritage Council.

Alternatively, individual tags can be qualified by start and end dates, and more complex approaches involving relations have been proposed.

A slider allows visitors to filter the map data to a point in time from 4001 BCE in the proleptic Gregorian calendar to the present day.

In addition to the REST API, a weekly database dump allows bulk downloads in Protocol Buffers–encoded OSM XML format.

[11] Ecologists have used OpenHistoricalMap data to track the change of geological features over time such as the path of rivers.