
National Park Maps - hownottowrite
http://npmaps.com/
======
BarkMore
The site [http://caltopo.com/](http://caltopo.com/) is another good resource
for maps. The site includes a number of maps including USGS, USFS and marine
charts. There are several useful overlays for hikers including trails and fire
history.

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tammer
I'm a huge fan of a little app called Maplets.[1] Has saved me on a number of
occasions, and highlights how limited the big name mapping tools really still
are for all kinds of navigation information.

[1]: [http://www.mobilemaplets.com/](http://www.mobilemaplets.com/)

~~~
rasengan0
Mee too, off to europe and maplets is my goto offline.
[https://www.openstreetmap.org/](https://www.openstreetmap.org/) and GPS on
[https://www.google.com/maps](https://www.google.com/maps) are supplements.
What always surprises me is GPS working sans wifi and cellular

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Dowwie
This is a great resource for someone to get started preparing a trip but when
you're ready for topo detail, I highly recommend:
[https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php](https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php)

It offers 8 different collections of topographical maps, some that include
trails

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derwiki
Similarly, I took a weekend last summer and built www.mapofnationalparks.com
to show on one map where all the parks were, and link to the official site /
hiking, etc (with pretty pictures, of course).

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bmc7505
Nice! As someone who loves to hike, you should add the National Forest Maps
too: [https://www.fs.fed.us/visit/maps/](https://www.fs.fed.us/visit/maps/)

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npmaps
Hi, I'm not the OP but I am the creator of NPMaps (many thanks to
hownottowrite for submitting this). I would indeed like to get around to
Forest Service maps after I finish with the national park units. However,
they're lower on my to-do list because I've found Forest Service maps to be
much more time-consuming to aggregate. Fewer people are searching for them as
well.

So, it will happen eventually! I just can't promise it'll happen until I
finish the national parks -- unfortunately, it'll be a while since I work a
full-time job and this is just a side project when I have free time.

~~~
gmichnikov
I bet if you throw together a quick sign-up form and post it here soon you
could get dozens of volunteers who would be willing to find the maps for a
couple of places that you assign them and email them to you.

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msimpson
As the website states:

> NPMaps.com is an independent website and is not affiliated with the National
> Park Service.

> This is just a one-man project that gets worked on whenever said guy
> actually has some free time. It's hard work!

This is particularly important as NPS actually has an official Mapbox based
initiative underway, here:

[https://www.nps.gov/npmap/](https://www.nps.gov/npmap/)

[https://github.com/nationalparkservice](https://github.com/nationalparkservice)

In an attempt to unite their various datasets from around the country into one
large system.

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lebek
If you're into the aesthetic of these maps,
[http://www.reliefshading.com/](http://www.reliefshading.com/) is a very nice
resource explaining the process.

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aw3c2
I usually hate pages that try to monetize via related affiliate links but this
looks so genuinely useful and transports such a positive, down-to-earth and
user-friendly vibe that I just love it. Well done!

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kinkrtyavimoodh
Why?

I can understand review-spam kind of blogs where people just write a shitty
review filled with affiliate links but there are tonnes of pages that do a
good job at creating content and try to monetize a bit via affiliate links.

People hate ads, people hate tracking, hardly anyone pays subscriptions fees,
and now if you hate even affiliate links, it comes across more as hating the
fact that people are trying to make money from the content they have spent
hours creating.

~~~
rdiddly
Kind of correct. Probably it's only because I still remember the old "non-
monetized" internet, but I just don't get the line of thought that posting
some stuff on the web means everybody owes you a living. Lest we forget, those
who want to make money from the internet are the more recent arrivals, and
(especially at the time when it happened and I was young & idealistic) I found
them to be like the crass uninvited guests who show up late and ruin the party
(while thinking they actually turned a lame party awesome). Before they
arrived, "the party" was full of useful sites like this, run by people for the
simple love of whatever-it-was. The amateur internet, I suppose you'd call it.
The reason this is a breath of fresh air is because it simply is what it is
(not in the trying-to-assuage-my-disappointment sense, but in the no-
deceptive-obfuscation sense) and in that way hearkens back to that era and
doesn't bear the stench of today's typical swindles, schemes, and dubious
offers. Yet it takes advantage of some of today's design tools/ideas and is a
better quality experience than a lot of sites "back in the day."

Mind you, I don't begrudge anyone what they're doing, even if it's commercial,
but the time you spent creating "content" may be worth something to someone,
or maybe not. When you demand compensation, the bar is higher.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
>> "that posting some stuff on the web means everybody owes you a living."

You don't owe them a living, but specifically acting to rob them of a living
that they are trying to earn without getting in your way (affiliate links or
non intrusive ads or such) moves from idealistic to dickish.

New inventions or changes give rise to new paradigms, and with new paradigms
come new ways to earn money or in general exchange goods and services.

~~~
rdiddly
Nobody said a thing about acting to rob anybody of anything. If you're trying
to reopen the ad-blocking debate, I'm not really interested in that. I'm
saying and I believe the grandparent is saying, sites with those features are
to varying degrees less-good, precisely because of those features. Since I'm
under no obligation to funnel myself into that site, I'll tend to ignore it,
and I'm more likely to ignore it the less value it actually offers. (And the
net value it offers, does decrease because of ads and adtech tactics.)

In my case I'm also saying, commerce itself is basically boring; I can find it
anywhere.

I believe your use of the word "rob" is inappropriate since you can't be
robbed of something you don't own. (My attention, the content of my web
browser, etc.)

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joewils
Thank you for all the effort you've put into this project. Love the clean
design and how you've used affiliate links and merchandising to monetize the
site. A+ work.

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trhaynes
Love the site! Great work. I wish pages like
[http://npmaps.com/colorado/](http://npmaps.com/colorado/) had big
thumbnails/previews — would make picking a map easier than solely with text
descriptions (which are well-written btw).

~~~
npmaps
Thanks for the feedback! Admittedly, I'm pretty new when it comes to web
design and have been sort of making it up as I go along. I ended up with the
current layout because it was easy enough to code that I could figure out how
to do it. I'm sure I could find some tools to allow hover image previews
though - I'll add that to my (very long!) to-do list.

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theparanoid
The south-west (including California) has a crazy amount of NPs
[http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/national-park-
map.jpg](http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/national-park-map.jpg)

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voltagex_
What's the licencing situation on the higher res PDF maps? It might be cool to
chop them up into tiles and use something like Leaflet [1] to display it in
browser.

1: [http://leafletjs.com/](http://leafletjs.com/)

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chrisan
Speaking of maps, is there a good app with offline maps to use with your GPS?

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codingdave
I know this isn't directly an answer, but I live in Utah and find that mapping
on a device is not reliable in some of the parks, and definitely not out in
the wilderness. The cell network just isn't 100%, and unless your device has a
satellite-based GPS, your mapping won't work anyway.

I do agree that better apps are needed. I'm an avid explorer of Utah's western
desert, and even with both paper maps and electronic, and prepping by looking
at what Google maps thinks is correct and reviewing satellite imagery before I
go, the patchwork of old abandoned dirt roads out there is still a maze much
of the time.

The point being... when going out into the wilderness, even with a good app,
please don't rely on it 100%. Plan well and be safe.

~~~
maxerickson
Maybe check [https://www.blm.gov/maps/georeferenced-
PDFs](https://www.blm.gov/maps/georeferenced-PDFs) for coverage.

I expect the BLM maps would be at least as detailed as Google and probably
better.

~~~
codingdave
Yes, IF you have an actual GPS device. My point is that most people's mapping
on their cell phone is running off the cell network, not the actual GPS
network, so will fail once you lose signal. Including mine. :)

I primarily use paper maps and a compass, to be honest. It might be old-
school, but it still works if my batteries die.

EDIT: OK, I stand corrected! I just am the old guy who hasn't updated my phone
in forever. My iphone 4 doesn't cut it apparently... But my paper and compass
really does work.

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maxerickson
Smart phones generally have a dedicated GPS receiver (with support for several
satellite constellations). A smart phone dependent on the network for
positioning would be an exception at this point (they certainly use the
network to speed up location acquisition and improve precision, but they are
not dependent on it).

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sandworm101
But what can happen while traveling into new areas is that whej data link
drops the mapping ap blanks, rendering the gps fix less than useful and giving
the impression that the device is dependant on data coverage. Most phones have
a facility to pre-download maps to cover this situation but you need to know
to do it.

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ghaff
GPS receivers without maps are still perfectly useful if you have appropriate
paper maps. And even if you have a dedicated GPS receiver with maps you need
to pre-download maps as well.

