[HN Gopher] USGS Historical Topographic Maps
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USGS Historical Topographic Maps
Author : bryanrasmussen
Score : 161 points
Date : 2024-02-18 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.esri.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.esri.com)
| lvspiff wrote:
| Whenever i see a topo map I recall my college days when I had a
| mountaineering buddy who took us out to middle of wilderness in
| his jeep with nothing but a topo map and a compass on a snow shoe
| hike on the San Francisco Peaks in Flagstaff, AZ. We were trying
| to hike to a cabin but a snow storm cropped up and had to find a
| fast way down - his skills with a compass and that map were
| amazing and we made it back to his jeep in 30 minutes what it had
| taken us the previous 3 hours to hike (we had a couple of daring
| downhill rides/jumps).
|
| With GPS and all nowadays it feels like that skill might be lost,
| but hopefully there are some guys out there daring enough to keep
| it going to take those of us who dont know out for an adventure
| ghaff wrote:
| I do usually carry a paper map and compass if I'm somewhere I
| don't know well. I have broken a phone and had the battery die
| and am very aware that I'm a dropped phone away from being
| utterly and completely lost.
| arethuza wrote:
| The only times I have made significant route finding mistakes
| in the last ten years were _after_ I started using a GPS for
| route finding - in both cases I took the wrong ridge down
| from a peak. My wife was also in a group that managed to
| descend completely the wrong side of a mountain the first
| time the person leading used a GPS...
| gumby wrote:
| If you're in the wilderness you should know how to navigate
| with map and compass, and check your gps. A no-power backup
| could save your life.
|
| This is the same reason you should know how to make a fire even
| if you have a stove. I've had a stove fail due to dust in the
| PRV. A fire kept us warm.
|
| Be prepared.
| OnACoffeeBreak wrote:
| Local adventure racing and orienteering organizations typically
| have beginner classes that teach map and compass navigation. At
| least the one near me does every couple of months.
| Stevvo wrote:
| For me it was scouts; the scout master would bundle us all in
| the back of a van at night, drive us a couple of miles in a
| random direction and then task us to find our way back to camp
| with nothing but a map & compass.
|
| It was a real adventure; we had no idea that the troop leaders
| were 50 meters away keeping tabs us through night-vision
| goggles all night.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| You should see if there are orienteering courses in your area.
| It is a fun activity. It's like playing chess while running.
|
| https://orienteeringusa.org/explore/what-is-orienteering/
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Not map and compass, but the book The Natural Navigator is
| excellent for honing your skills.
|
| https://www.naturalnavigator.com/
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is an original 90s software lock-in company, for context on
| the deal you are accepting with their services. (see Oracle Corp)
| ufocia wrote:
| Yep, essentially a Terraserver reboot.
| defrost wrote:
| Worth it for the link to the 224 page
|
| _History of the Topographic Branch (Division)_
| https://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/1341/pdf/circ_1341.pdf
|
| with all manner of trivia including: _U.S. patents issued to U.S.
| Geological Survey photogrammetrists_ etc.
| arnmac wrote:
| I love these USGS publications. So much history in them.
| nullhole wrote:
| The maps are available directly through the USGS as well, if you
| want to avoid the 3rd party viewer:
|
| https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/#4/40.01/-100.06
| ryandrake wrote:
| The USGS's viewer is kind of odd in that unlike every other
| online map in existence, double clicking does not zoom in. It
| also overlays all of the maps with a weird color tint (which
| you can fix by turning off "Turn map boundaries on or off" in
| Settings). Both viewers annoyingly fill your browser history
| every time you move around or change zoom levels.
|
| [Edited to remove snark]
| city41 wrote:
| > Both viewers annoyingly fill your browser history every
| time you move around or change zoom levels
|
| To be fair that's not limited to map viewers. A lot of web
| apps do that. I think finding the right balance is a bit of
| an art.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Maybe let the USGS folks know? If they're anything like any
| other department, they have one person whose job it is to
| work on every single website, and they're not well-researched
| web developers, they're a jack of all trade who had to learn
| just enough tricks on a page by page basis to keep things
| from falling apart, with a mandate to leave things alone
| until they break.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Also, if USGS doesn't have the resources to improve this,
| propose they post it as a challenge for public solutioning:
| https://www.challenge.gov/
|
| Sometimes, an agency is in need of a willing helping hand.
| int_19h wrote:
| While we're at it, USGS also has the complete _current_
| topographic maps for the entirety of US available to download:
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/how-do-i-find-download-or-order-to...
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/can-i-get-bulk-order-usgs-topograp...
|
| The complete set of offline topographic maps in GeoPDF format
| with embedded satellite image layer (that can be enabled or
| disabled if your PDF reader can handle layers properly) is ~2.8
| Tb.
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| You can get these direct from USGS in KMZ, GeoTIFF, GeoPDF, and
| JPEG format.
|
| And mobile apps like Topo Reader and Avenza Maps for iOS will let
| you load them for live referencing. I just "discovered" this
| yesterday, by chance.
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/hi...
|
| https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/#4/39.98/-99.98
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I have boxes and boxes of these in storage. A library was being
| closed in my home state of Colorado , where the USGS is based,
| and I couldn't let them get thrown away.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| crucial when the electricity is out for weeks! does no one any
| good unless they can be found at that time though..
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Genealogy value: Awesome for locating defunct places - the ones
| missing from gen sites' known-locations (when you which area.
| ex:county).
| xipho wrote:
| Biodiversity value as well. Our natural history collections
| reference specimens that can be hundreds of years old, the
| labels can be cryptic (see Notes for Nature efforts) and
| reference places no longer here. Early geological survey work
| maybe even have been accompanied by biodiversity collectors,
| there is a nice PhD project in here somewhere to correlate the
| two efforts.
| samcheng wrote:
| If you have a cabin or some natural spot you care about in the
| US, I highly recommend purchasing an actual USGS paper topo map.
| They are beautiful!
| Steltek wrote:
| Boston gets a lot of attention for its drastic changes even over
| the past century. Comparing modern Boston to its 1893 map:
|
| * All of Logan airport, Winthrop, etc simply didn't exist
|
| * MIT was a mud flat
|
| * South Bay was still a bay, not a shopping center
|
| * Obviously pre-interstate, railroads dominate the transportation
| focus
|
| * Back Bay has already been filled in. The collection of mini-
| street grids is apparent in Back Bay and South Boston (Southie).
|
| * The isolation of the Boston peninsula is less apparent at this
| point. E.g. Paul Revere's "one if by land, two if by sea" for the
| British heading NW to Lexington.
| cuuupid wrote:
| Esri is an anticompetitive company leeching taxpayer dollars that
| only exists because ArcGIS trapped the government before many
| govcon laws preventing vendor lock in were put in place.
|
| We would have 10x the mapping capabilities and much higher
| velocity on defense tech without this parasitic company.
|
| Btw, also recently fined for blatant sexism against hundreds of
| female employees.
| partitioned wrote:
| Yeah esri sucks and it's software is worse than open source but
| it's the only thing they teach because contracts
| sien wrote:
| The open source geospatial community is pretty amazing :
|
| https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Main_Page
|
| Esri in the cloud is terrible. Geoserver is much better.
|
| Cloud Native Geospatial might break Esri's hold :
|
| https://cloudnativegeo.org/
| Soupy wrote:
| I also have been building and offering my own UI on top of the
| USGS collection of maps (among others in the public domain) at
| https://pastmaps.com if anyone else finds the existing UIs
| frustrating like I do. This is a labor of love and something I'm
| continuing to chip away at and make better and better with time
|
| Interestingly enough, I ended up discovering some incorrect data
| in their system as part of my ingestion process 4 months ago and
| directly worked with the USGS to both report the pipeline errors
| causing bad output and they were incredibly prompt and open to
| collaborating on identifying the issue and proper fix (roughly a
| 2 week turnaround from original report to correction). I honestly
| wonder if this 1700+ update to the ESRI collection is a direct
| result of that work because the numbers do roughly align so that
| would be exciting!
| njarboe wrote:
| I remember when how I got maps for cross-country hikes was to go
| down to the Oakland library and they had a collection of all the
| USGS quadrangle maps. The lithography of the paper maps was
| excellent. I'd find the ones for the areas I was interested in
| (climbing guides list which quads you should have) and Xerox the
| parts I needed. Sometimes I would order the originals from the
| USGS or travel to Menlo Park to purchase them at the source.
| Those stacks of map cases and thousands of maps are now gone. I
| would have loved to have picked up that full collection when they
| got rid of them.
|
| The large size and fine detail of a those lithographs are just
| not reproducible on a portable screen or printout. It's great to
| have digital versions available to everyone but the originals are
| works of art.
| jedberg wrote:
| I went on a tour of the USGS in Palo Alto in 2012. They used to
| keep all the Bay Area Topo maps there. The curator of the museum
| had a burning hatred for Google (which was basically across the
| street).
|
| He told us that Google is 100% to blame for the cancellation of
| the USGS topographic maps program. Their management told him
| "Google is capturing it all now, so we don't need to do it
| anymore". He hated them with a burning passion because he was
| told to turn over all of his maps to Google for digitization into
| Google Maps because they would be shutting down the paper
| archives that he was in charge of.
|
| He wasn't mad because his job was going away (they were going to
| reassign him anyway) -- he was mad because he felt that it wasn't
| right for Google to be in charge of archiving and controlling
| access to what was public information. He was also mad because
| Google's maps weren't nearly as good as his.
|
| I hope that guy is still around and happy to see that the
| topographic maps live on and are freely available now.
| Borg3 wrote:
| Geez. Thats sad indeed. Seems management does NOT give a shit
| about data distribution. Yeah, but all into google, and they
| will do with it whatever thet want, even shutting it down
| later. Stupid. I myself also have open hatetred for them. I run
| my own maps aggregation service (Leaflet FTW!) and Im
| aggregating service from google, openstreetmap, USGS/ESRI and
| some local tiles provider as well. I would be glad to get even
| more free sources (especially SAT images), but unfortunately
| cannot find anything decent.
| juliusgeo wrote:
| I was obsessed with topographic maps as a kid--had the paper maps
| for most of the counties in my corner of my state. Led to an
| interest in geography, and is the reason my usernames on most
| platforms have been my name+geo for the last two decades. You
| could buy the quadrant maps at various general stores in my area,
| and bought a few of the larger county maps at the PA farm show.
| Those maps were huge--the size of a large rug, but incredibly
| detailed (showed individual houses outside of urban areas). At
| the time I was collecting them, the last survey had been done in
| the 1980s, and it was interesting seeing the in-progress highways
| marked that were at that time completely built. Looks like there
| was a gap in the surveys between 1984 and 2010 according to
| https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer/, but now have been
| updated every ~3 years.
| ijustlovemath wrote:
| Anyone know how to search these maps for features? I was able to
| locate two "secret" climbing areas I'm privy to but zooming to
| the right location, but it would be cool to identify potential
| future spots without just scrolling through
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