So where’d you get that topo map?

In a past installment we’ve provided a brief history on the the USGS topographic map. There’s a lot of products out there with topo maps: web sites, CD sets, paper maps. So where did they come from, and how can you tell the difference?

In the mid 1990’s the US Geological Survey began producing digital scans of the original paper topo maps. The scanning program was completed in the past few years, and the result is a widespread collection of digital topos that power everything from topo map websites such as Microsoft Terraserver and Topozone, to our own map printing service at MyTopo.

Not everybody uses the USGS scans (map software such as National Geographic Topo! And MapTech Terrain Navigator), and there are some good reasons why. One is that they were developed for digital use in mind, so they don’t work well for all purposes. We’ve had good look converting and enhancing the database to make great prints and digital products, and they provide a cost-effective map source that helps us keep our prices low. Perhaps more importantly, the USGS scanning program did not result in a complete set of digital maps. The Forest Service Single Edition maps we talked about in a previous article, for example, were largely left out of the scanned database.

To those of us that use the USGS digital maps, it became apparent over the past few years that if we wanted to provide the most current, accurate maps available we were going to need to take the situation into our own hands. The folks at Igage Mapping (producers of the AllTopo map software products) were on the ball and agressively filled the hole left in the USGS scanning program with a map updating program of their own. At MyTopo we were fortunate to tag along, and now have over 5,000 new digital maps that don’t exist from many other sources.

Many of these new maps are from the Single Edition series, and others are map updates that came after the now-expired map scanning program.

So there are lots of sources for topo maps out there, but they’re not always identical. We at MyTopo have tried to strike a middle ground, while making sure that we always provide the most updated maps availabe.