30 April 2009
Free Topo Maps
Posted by admin under: Equipment .
Camping Blogger lets you know where you can get free topo maps from the government. These maps won’t be mailed to you in tight rolls of information. That’s you’ve got to pay for. However, you are allowed to download zip files of your maps.
navigate to store.usgs.gov, and select the Map Locator link. Provided you have Google Maps open in the same browser (on the original tab) and centered on your area of interest, the USGS Map Locator tool should display a map marker that is close to the same area.
It didn’t quite work that way for me. The store link kept dying so I went to usgs.gov then clicked on the maps, imagery, and publications tab on the upper left which took me to a page where I clicked on the maps section link “Download digital scans of topo maps” which finally got me to a page that had a link to the store whose address for me was actually http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/usgs/maplocator/(xcm=r3standardpitrex_prd&layout=6_1_61_48&uiarea=2&ctype=areaDetails&carea=%24ROOT)/.do Whew! Try saying that 3 times fast. From there on Camping Blogger’s instructions worked. I found that I didn’t have to download the PDF converter/toolbar thing. When you open the map PDF after unpacking it from the zip file, the reader says that you don’t have full functionality and asks if you want to add it. If you say yes you get your map displayed and then don’t actually have to install the toolbar (I don’t like adding toolbars to my browser which is where I assume it would end up).
I really love these old topo maps. You can see stuff that people have forgotten about like wells, markers, and old oil fields. Cool!
To see the screecaps click over to Camping Blogger’s page where he gives in-depth instructions on how to do it. Be forewarned, though. It took me about 30 to 45 minutes to find, download, and view the map.
I’m still unsure how to print a zoomed-in part of the topo map because I never need the whole thing and it prints teeny-tiny if you print an entire map on 8.5 x 11 paper. Well, that’s an experiement for another day.
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One Comment so far...
New York OA Trader | Shared Items From Around The Web - May 1, 2009 Says:
1 May 2009 at 9:03 am.
[...] Free Topo Maps [...]
