

USGS Releases New Topographic Maps of Colorado and Minnesota - dw9871
http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=3688

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foohbarbaz
These new USGS GeoPDF quads are awesome, but... useless. Most of them do not
have trails, secondary (dirt) roads and even forest coverage. These new
Colorado sets apparently have trails in national forests, but a sample I
looked at (Longs Peak quad in RMNP) had no trails still.

Since it's outdoorsmen that use these maps, having no trails makes them
worthless.

Here's what I do. Go to the USGS store and download older maps in
(georeferenced) raster PDF format. These are hi res scans of real USGS quad
maps. Just pick up anything older than 2012/2013\. Use Acroread to print each
map in poster mode 75% scale landscape to two 11x17" pages. Splice the pages
and you have pretty much perfect USGS quad. I just came back from a hike in
Wind Rivers and I had 14 USGS quads with me, covering all of the range.

Another option is this:

[http://caltopo.com/](http://caltopo.com/)

This site creates a seamless map out of the same USGS maps. You can print via
PDF using correct scale and paper size. This is great for custom maps
(although I still prefer quads as mentioned above).

To USGS: nice try, but until you add all layers present on real maps these are
not any good.

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jonemo
If you really need this, you could download the raster data (find the URLs via
the National Map Viewer [1] for example) and add whatever type of
road/trail/path you want on top using OpenStreetMap data.

[1]
[http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/](http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/)

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ChuckMcM
Nice. Although it bugs me to have the 'share this' bar on a government site
annoyingly floating in the page.

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ISL
'share this' isn't really a problem; getting government products to the people
who paid for them is a good thing. The lack of an open and widely-used social
networking interface probably is.

From another perspective: If the 'share this' button had only "e-mail" as an
option, I doubt it would bother anyone.

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narfquat
Poor Alaska, forever uncharted territory :(

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revelation
Apparently at least one government agency has not received the "national
security" memo yet.

This material is arguably much more dangerous to national security than
anything Snowden ever released.

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jessaustin
Creating and publishing maps like this is pretty much the purpose of the US
Geological Survey.

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jfb
That, and running the earthquake site [1]. I show that to everybody I know
when they move to the Bay Area or Seattle. It induces compulsive refreshing.

[1] [http://tinyurl.com/l2w75wl](http://tinyurl.com/l2w75wl)

