The Map Room

Via Daniel Huffman comes word that David Woodward’s relief map of Wisconsin, first published in 1971, is now available for download on the Shaded Relief Archive. The archive, the brainchild of Tom Patterson, who previously gave us the Shaded Relief website (previously), and Bernhard Jenny, is a collection of scanned manually shaded relief maps — relief maps before computers came along.

Our dual goals are giving cartographers a stylish option to generic digital shaded relief — manual relief often provides a clearer picture of major terrain features, especially at small scales, as shown in this comparison. And scanning the best hand-drawn relief before it is permanently lost. We are in a race against time. Mapping organizations having now shifted to digital production are discarding photomechanical materials, including manual shaded relief. Much of this beautiful art deserves to be used by future mapmakers.

Some lovely stuff in there.

Wapenmaps are contour maps made of stainless steel. The company, Wapentac, produces several maps of locations in various British national parks. Relatively inexpensive at £20, and small enough (17×8.9 cm) to be shipped by mail, they require some assembly by the purchaser to separate the contours from each other. Via La Cartoteca.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation has produced a map of biking and hiking trails in the northeastern part of the state. “The routes generally use existing highways that have been identified as desirable roads for bicycling. In some cases, the route uses improved rail trails to bypass difficult sections.” County-level maps are also available; all maps are PDFs. More from the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader.

Gadling reminds us that handheld GPS units do have their limitations when you hike with them in the wilderness: they don’t have turn-by-turn directions, they may not get a signal in rough terrain (e.g., in a canyon), and they’re dependent on batteries. These seem like obvious points, but sometimes you do need to state the obvious.

Cold War era Soviet maps of the UK have gotten some mainstream media attention over the past month or so: the Guardian looks at a 1974 map showing invasion routes into Manchester, in the context of a local exhibition; the Southern Daily Echo’s focus is on Southampton, and on the work of Alex Kent of the University of Southampton’s Cartographic Unit, which has a page on the maps and offers reprints for sale. Via MapHist.

Previously: Soviet Spies Map the World; Soviet Mapping Update; Soviet Spy Maps for Sale.

North Korea is very much in the news lately, but very much not on the map. The North Korea Uncovered project is trying to do something about that: it’s a Google Earth layer (KMZ file) that maps installations, landmarks…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Google is taking Street View to biking and hiking trails, USA Today reports. Instead of a car with a camera mounted on the roof, Google employees are using “a modified three-wheeled bike, like the ones used to take tourists for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

On About.com, Rob London explains the concept of topographic prominence — the measure of a peak’s height around its surroundings, and therefore a measure of its inherent awesomeness. Via Matt….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via All Points Blog comes word that USGS map prices are going up by $2 to $3 per sheet, effective March 2. Get your orders in now, people….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Santa Barbara Independent looks at a new map of the Santa Barbara backcountry (in California), the Matilija and Dick Smith Wilderness Map Guide, and its creator, Bryan Conant. It’s his second map of the backcountry; the first was…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Two very different ways of making your own topo maps are explained in the following guides: Kevin Kelly talks about how to download free digital versions of USGS topo maps and print them (via Kottke); GPSFileDepot’s tutorial on how to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s scheduled for completion in 2010, but already the Atlas of Yellowstone, tantalizing bits of which that have already been completed are already available for preview, looks more than promising. It goes beyond maps of just the park, although…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Contour lines have been added to Google Maps’s terrain map layer, which adds its their usefulness (especially, for example, in a mountain context). But it has some way to go before it’s a suitable replacement for a topo map;…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Topographic map symbols for historic topographic maps: “Presented here is a collection of symbols used on USGS Topographic Maps printed from the late 1890s. The styles of the symbols have changed dramatically since this time, and the beginning of their…  •  Continue reading this entry.

When last we heard about Chris Jesty’s revision of Alfred Wainwright’s Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, nearly three years ago, volume one (of seven) was just about to be published. Now five volumes have been published, the Cumberland News…  •  Continue reading this entry.

At the University of Maine’s Folger Library this Wednesday, cartographer Michael Hermann and Penobscot Nation Tribal Historian James Francis will give a presentation on the Thoreau-Wabanaki Trail Map. “‘The Process of Map Design: equal cartographic voice’ will be an…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Don’t miss Cartophilia’s post about the most curious quadrangle map in the USGS’s catalogue: Rozel Point Southwest, Utah. In the middle of Great Salt Lake. You can see where this is going….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Colorado Springs Gazette profiles ski resort illustrator James Niehues, whom we first encountered in March 2006. “For 20 years, Niehues, 61, has been North America’s preeminent ski resort illustrator — the guy who paints the trail maps for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The United States Geological Survey’s National Map makes use of a corps of volunteers, who are assigned a given area (a USGS quad) and report the names and coordinates of various map features, such as schools, town halls and other…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Most trail maps are spare and functional: without context, you might not even know that trees and mountains are involved. But geography graduate student Molly Holmberg has produced a watercolour map of the trails and open spaces of Bangor, Maine…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via GeoCarta, an article about army mapmaking in Iraq, where it now takes a day for the team to create a customized, mission-specific map on a plotter; when it was done by hand, it could take as much as a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Further to the previous report that the government of Canada would make digital topographic data available for free: here is the official announcement and here is the site where you can download that data. It’s called GeoGratis — cute. Via…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Matt Fox, who georectified the Great Salt Lake bathymetric maps for use as Google Earth overlays, has made available his entire collection of maps through a Google Earth network link. The collection includes topo maps of the western U.S.,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Last June, Paul posted something about a rumour that Natural Resources Canada had been on the verge of making digital topographic data freely available, but that it had been put on hold while the new minister reviewed the decision. Today,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

So what is Maps for Canadians doing now that the federal government changed its mind and decided not to stop producing paper topo maps? They’re campaigning to bring our topo maps up to date — and they want people to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Remember those Soviet maps of the UK that Russian spies compiled during the Cold War? Now reprints are being offered for sale, El Reg reports. (This reminds me that my Soviet map of the world is badly torn and needs…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s a bit presumptuous to call them “hiker’s maps,” as the European Space Agency does in its announcement, but the Mars Express scientists have generated several sample topographic maps of the Iani Chaos region of Mars, in an exercise…  •  Continue reading this entry.

GeoCarta reports that the second of two bathymetric maps of Utah’s Great Salt Lake has been released by the USGS. Both maps are available online (north part, south part) and available for download as substantial 150-dpi PDF files; Matt…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The deaths of the following people associated with cartography were reported recently: Tom Devine (1927-2006) spent 32 years working as a cartographer for the USGS; he was a mountain climber and stereographic photographer in his off-hours. Via Maps-L. Bradford Washburn…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Historic Pittsburgh is a site featuring documents, maps and books from the University of Pittsburgh and other Pittsburgh-area collections. Their Map Collections section has four large series of map scans available: Geodetic and topographic survey maps for Pittsburgh between…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Paul sends along a link to these scans of topo maps of Russian cities. The Soviet-era maps date from the 1980s, from what I can tell; they’re downloadable as very large TIFF files. Previously: Soviet Mapping Update; Soviet Spies…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Via Maps-L, a letter in the Dec. 4 issue of The Hill Times, a weekly newspaper covering the Canadian government, from Heather McAdam of the Association of Canadian Map Libraries and Archives argues that while paper topographic maps have been…  •  Continue reading this entry.

ACME Mapper started out as a front end for TerraServer; it’s now a Google Maps mashup that adds TerraServer data (including USGS topo maps) and NEXRAD weather radar data as additional layers — though these added layers are U.S.-only. Via…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Guardian reports that the British government has decided to end a subsidy to the Ordnance Survey. The subsidy appears to have had two purposes: one, to ease the OS’s transition from a state-run agency to what is referred to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Today I received the following letter, dated October 30, from the Canadian Minister of Natural Resources, Gary Lunn, in response to my letter asking him to overturn the decision to stop producing paper topographic maps. You will recall that shortly…  •  Continue reading this entry.

You may recall Jared Benedict’s stunt last August to “free the maps” by raising $1,600 to pay for a complete set of USGS topographic map data. The fruits of that fundraiser — 1:24K DRGs, geonames and other geospatial data files…  •  Continue reading this entry.

This site is a digital archive of maps produced by the Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny, the Polish Geographic-Military Institute, which existed between 1919 and 1939 and produced some very good topographic maps of the country. Lots of scans here, all very…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Jasper Booster reports that two Jasper residents named Mike (Mike Mitchell and Mike Day) have spent the past few years designing a new map of Jasper National Park, the first map of the entire park since Parks Canada…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Grant reviews the Mac version of National Geographic’s Topo! software: “a pretty decent package, but not great.” Via GPS Tracklog. Because the Topo! series is U.S.-only, I haven’t had cause to try it out; I hope someday to find an…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Broer Map Library, which I mentioned last month, seems to be coming along nicely; Dave Broer announced on Maps-L that scans of 1,300 old USGS topo maps have been added to the collection. “This brings our online offering to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Slashgeo reports: “As a followup on previous announcement of the end of paper maps for Canadians, we learn today that ‘[…] the decision to close the Canada Map Office as of next year has been reversed by the NRCan Minister.’”…  •  Continue reading this entry.

GPS Tracklog has discovered a clearing house for U.S. Forest Service geodata, and talks about how that geodata can be used (hint: raster images can be viewed in most image viewers)….  •  Continue reading this entry.

In the spirit of Maps for Canadians’s letter-writing campaign to overturn the Canadian government’s decision to stop producing topo maps (see previous entry), I have written my own letter to Minister of Natural Resources Gary Lunn. (More effective to write…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Maps for Canadians is an online campaign to get the Canadian government to reverse its decision to stop printing paper topographical maps. They encourage people to write the Minister of Natural Resources and their local member of parliament; note that…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Today’s edition of the Lawrence Journal-World has a feature on orienteering, with a look at local clubs. For you young whippersnappers with your fancy GPS doohickeys, that’s like geocaching, but with only a compass and topo map….  •  Continue reading this entry.

U.S. government data is ostensibly public domain, but as Jared Benedict, the force behind the Libre Map Project, discovered, you still need to pay for it sometimes. Jared was trying to make USGS 1:24,000 topo maps in DRG format…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s in Dutch, so I’m likely missing most of the nuances, but this site — De WoonOmgeving — has both 1832 cadastral and 2000 topo maps of the Netherlands available through the same interface; if both are available for a…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Topographic maps of New Zealand’s Offshore Islands, the Cook Islands and Tokelau are available for download from Land Information New Zealand’s web site. The maps are mostly 1:25,000, with a few 1:50,000, and are large-sized JPEGs, big enough to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Interspersed with Cartography’s coverage of the CCA conference were a couple of tidbits about the government’s decision to get out of the business of paper maps. From this post: Representatives of [Natural Resources Canada] were there to explain their plans…  •  Continue reading this entry.

China’s official Xinhua news agency reports that the Chinese government has begun mapping a large uninhabited region of western China, variously called Hoh Xil or Kekexili, in the northwestern part of the Tibetan plateau, as part of a project to…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Hikers with GPS receivers have mapped out previously uncharted trails between Santa Clarita and Palmdale in northern Los Angeles County, California, the LA Daily News reports. The maps, which were tentatively approved by the county’s Regional Planning Commission this week,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Capital News, the student newspaper of Carleton University’s journalism school, has a story about the imminent demise of paper topographic maps in Canada. (I suspect that link might not be permanent.) There’s nothing really new in this story: the Centre…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Jeff Thurston’s contribution to the debate over free geodata looks at the question of scale: if you want geospatial data to be free and updated regularly, consider the huge amount of territory that has to be mapped. Wired’s piece,…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Boing Boing reports that the archive of silly Tube maps (previously mentioned here) has gotten into a spot of legal trouble and has been taken offline. As a followup on this question, have a look at Stefan’s post about…  •  Continue reading this entry.

(I’m going to try calling these link roundups “Triangulations” and see how that goes.) Via GPS Tracklog, the difference between Garmin’s and Magellan’s topo maps. The National Geographic Society is planning a “mega-map” of the Sonoran Desert region. “It will…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Evan Roberts asks, Why do you think Google hasn’t integrated USGS topographic quads as a layer in Google Earth? Not enough of a demand? Not relevant to its business model? Don’t want to step on the toes of GPS partners?…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Commercial artist James Niehues is responsible for a large number of panoramic ski resort maps — those bird’s-eye-view illustrations showing all the runs. A lot of them are available on his web site: there are galleries for eastern U.S., western…  •  Continue reading this entry.

GPS Mapping: Make Your Own Maps by Rich Owings Ten Mile Press, 2005. Softcover, 382 pp. ISBN 0-9760926-3-8 This is a book for people who want to get their hands dirty with mapping software and GPS units and generate maps…  •  Continue reading this entry.

In response to competition from the online mapping services, National Geographic Maps is restructuring, moving away from producing general-interest maps and towards specific niches, such as recreation, emergency, geology and other field work, the Denver Business Journal reports (via All…  •  Continue reading this entry.

It’s not online, and I don’t have a URL to refer to, but on CBC Ottawa’s local TV news last night, they had a long feature on the federal government’s decision to get out of the business of producing paper…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Australian government makes satellite imagery, geology maps (1:250,000 scale) and spatial data available free of charge. Via Glenn’s GISUser Weblog. See previous entry: Satellite Images and the Weather….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Cartography has an update on John Davies’s research into clandestine Soviet mapping, and points to a collection of World War II era Soviet maps. See previous entries: Soviet Spies Map the World; Soviet Topo Maps; Old Russian Maps….  •  Continue reading this entry.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union compiled topographic maps of virtually every corner of the world, to the extent that they are the only topo maps available for certain countries. The maps were both standardized and accurate; they were…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The 19th edition of the Connecticut Forest and Park Association’s “Walk Book” was generated by volunteers with GPS receivers; it took them three years to cover approximately 1,200 km of trails. With 40 per cent of the trails on private…  •  Continue reading this entry.

More trouble in Russia over the possession of large-scale (i.e., 1:25,000) maps, this time involving oil company BP. Apparently foreigners — including foreign corporations doing business in Russia — aren’t allowed to have them. Via Cartography. See previous entry: Maps…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The legally binding 1978 map of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has gone missing, the New York Times reports (free registration required). The map, wall-sized and 1:250,000 scale, was last seen in 2002 and apparently disappeared some time in early…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Globe and Mail has picked up the story (free registration may be required) about the Canadian government’s decision to get out of the business of printing paper topo maps, and map seller Brad Green’s campaign to overturn that decision….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The Canadian government wants to get out of the business of producing paper topographical maps, according to an e-mail from World of Maps president Brad Green (reprinted on Cartography). As of January 2007, when the lease on the Canada Map…  •  Continue reading this entry.

NOAA’s Office of Coast Survey’s Historical Map and Chart Collection “contains over 20,000 maps and charts from the late 1700s to present day. The Collection includes some of the nation’s earliest nautical charts, hydrographic surveys, topographic surveys, geodetic surveys, city…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Maps from the government of Tirol, one of the Austrian Länder, including this map of mountain bike trails in that Alpine region. Thanks, Glenn….  •  Continue reading this entry.

The LA Times has put together a collection of maps of trails in southern California. The maps are PDFs, and you’ll have to register to get at them. Via Gadling….  •  Continue reading this entry.

If you’re bemoaning the lack of open geographical data in your country, the following should give you pause. In Russia, public maps are limited to a scale of 1:100,000, with secret installations “cleansed”; higher-resolution maps are considered state secrets, their…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Pruned has discovered Harold Fisk’s 1944 Geological Investigation of the Alluvial Valley of the Lower Mississippi River, the text and plates of which are available for download from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers web site (though at hundreds of…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Alfred Wainwright’s seven-volume Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells (reissued box set), published between 1955 and 1966, were apparently marvels of art and detail (though I haven’t found any samples online), and have served as the definitive guides to hiking…  •  Continue reading this entry.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if a topo map mated with a pop-up book? No, you probably haven’t; you’re not that strange. I don’t know where these guys got the idea to make pop-up topographical maps for…  •  Continue reading this entry.

UC Berkeley has scanned and put online about a hundred years’ worth of USGS topographic maps of the San Francisco Bay area. Via Plep….  •  Continue reading this entry.

Ezra Padoa writes with a few links to collections of Russian/Soviet maps. First off are collections of Soviet military topographical maps. Says Ezra, “I’ve heard that Soviet military cartographers could be tried for treason if they made any mistakes. At…  •  Continue reading this entry.

The University of New Hampshire Library has put online a digital collection of old topo maps of New England and New York. Very high-resolution scans. This online collection of over 1500 USGS topographic maps includes complete geographical coverage of New…  •  Continue reading this entry.