[Joey]

The busy folks at USGS are doing two things of interest to hikers. Overview: http://nationalmap.gov/ 1. As you may already know, all new topo maps will be produced in GeoPDF format and contain a bunch of new features. The official name for these maps is “US Topo”. US Topo main page: http://nationalmap.gov/ustopo/index.html 2. But you might not know (I didn’t) that the feds are making new very high quality scans of all previously issued paper topos. If you want to look at a high quality scan of a 1930’s topo, you can download it for free. The official name for this massive work-in-progress is “Historical Topographic Maps”. Historical Topographic Maps main page: http://nationalmap.gov/historical/index.html My understanding is that “Historical” means all (or at least most) topo maps produced prior to about 2009. Currently Gmap4 has a map view labeled US Topo. Those maps are not the US Topo described above and I will be changing that name (likely to USGS Topo). Instead, when you click that menu item Gmap4 displays the Terraserver topo maps. Terraserver (now called Microsoft Research Maps) was a joint USGS-Microsoft project that scanned maps at 250 pixels per inch. By contrast, the Historical Topographic Map project is doing most of its scanning at 660 pixels per inch. The Historical project has completed this very high quality scanning for most western states including Washington. Want to download a free very high quality scan of the 1901 Snoqualmie Pass map? You can do that. Now let’s focus on the most recently issued ‘regular’ (i.e. pre US Topo) 7.5” topographic maps. That’s the one many of us want to take when we go out. To the best of my knowledge, the 660 dpi scans of those maps are significantly better quality than any other scanned topo out there, including the MyTopo scans. Those USGS 660 dpi scans are available for free download. One of the ways you can locate maps is via this tool: http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/usgs/maplocator/(ctype=areaDetails&xcm=r3standardpitrex_prd&carea=%24ROOT&layout=6_1_61_48&uiarea=2)/.do Finally, Gmap4 might soon be displaying these high quality scans of the most recently released ‘regular’ topos. Stay tuned.....

[MtnGoat]

Cool, you mean we can get the older ones in feet instead of the *$@@!! meters contours?

[Joey]

We're talking about scans of all the paper maps. You get whatever is printed on the paper.

[Slugman]

What if on the other side of the paper was a map to the hidden treasure of the Masons/pharaohs/founding fathers/etc? Would that show up? Very cool, Joey. I'm more interested in the latest maps than historical maps, but both are good to have. Thanks for the info, I hadn't heard of this at all until now.

[Bedivere]

Good information! Thanks Joey.

[Schroder]

Is there any freeware to read the geo-referenced coordinates now that they abandoned geotiff? Last time I looked the geopdf software cost a fortune.

[Joey]

[Schroder]

No I'm talking about transferring a GeoPDF to a gps. The old GeoTIFF had lots of software options for transferring and last I looked TerraGo had the only software to read a GeoPDF and it was over $1000. I see now that G-Raster has an updated program for doing the conversion. I just installed the TerraGo Toolbar and tried to open a map with Adobe Reader X and my system crashed

[puzzlr]

I just downloaded a batch of maps. The USGS map locator website doesn't work in Firefox/Mac for me, but it works in Chrome. TerraGo Toolbar - Only supported on PCs. Boo. Good thing I have one available, but I keep it around only for annoying things like this.

[Schroder]

They've got a lot of contour detail but the labels leave a lot to be desired. The personal touches are gone - unlike this map & the process to make it: The Greatest Paper Map of the United States You’ll Ever See Made by one guy in Oregon

[Joey]

My internal development code for Gmap4 now includes an additional map view that displays the most recently issued “Historical Topographic Maps”. The quality is eye-popping and blows away the MyTopo maps. Did I mention that there are no ugly watermarks? I still need to get a sign-off from a key player (more on that later) and update the docs before promoting that code into production.

[HitTheTrail]

Good info, thanks for the info. Why does it ask me for $15 when I try to download one from the download store? Which ones are free?

[Joey]

[D. Inscho]

Excellent resource for dreaming on new trips. Now I know what I'll be doing with all my "free" time this winter. Thanks Joey!

[Joey]

The new topographic maps that Gmap4 will soon be able to display actually consist of two different sets of map tiles. One set has the actual topo map and the other set has hill shading. Since the hill shading is a separate pile of data, I was able to add code to Gmap4 to let you set the amount of hill shading you prefer, including none if you so desire. The reason for the ~2 week delay is so all (or most) of the USA can be available when we flip the switch and turn these new maps on. To give you a sneak peek at these new maps and a comparison to the Terraserver and MyTopo maps, I took four screen shots of the Mason Lake area (center = 47.425564,-121.548211 WGS84). I cropped each one a bit in Photoshop but did not do any other processing. If you open each file in its own browser tab then you can easily flip back and forth. The difference in quality is stunning. The files are 2-3MB so they will take a few seconds to load. Also, you might need to click each picture on your screen in order to make it full size. Terraserver - low quality scan https://sites.google.com/site/gmap4files/p/png/compare_terraserver.png MyTopo - medium quality scan https://sites.google.com/site/gmap4files/p/png/compare_mytopo.png New topo+shading - high quality scan https://sites.google.com/site/gmap4files/p/png/compare_matt_shade.png (I adjusted the shading to be as close to MyTopo as I could get it.) New topo, no shading - high quality scan https://sites.google.com/site/gmap4files/p/png/compare_matt_no_shade.png Well, whadayathink?