More Than 1,700 Maps Added to USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection

From ESRI:

In collaboration with the US Geological Survey (USGS), Esri recently updated the online USGS historical topographic map collection with over 1,700 new maps.

Esri’s USGS topographic map collection now contains 177,061 historical quadrangle maps dating from 1882 to 2006. Previously available only as printed lithographic copies, high-resolution images of these maps are freely available online and can be downloaded as georeferenced TIFFs for use in web maps, geographic information systems (GIS), and other applications. In this update, 1,227 new maps were added to the collection and 530 maps were replaced with better-quality images.

Going forward, Esri will be updating the map collection regularly to keep pace with work by the USGS staff who are continuing to scan their historical maps.The historical maps are part of the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection―a project that was launched in 2011. The collection includes all scales and all editions of the topographic maps published by the USGS since the inception of the topographic mapping program in 1879. The maps have scales ranging from 1:10,000 to 1:250,000. Some scales have broad coverage across the United States, while others may have only a few maps.

The USGS scanned each map as is to capture the content and condition of each map sheet. All maps were georeferenced, and metadata was captured as part of the process. Using ArcGIS, the scanned maps were made into an image service that can be viewed on the web and allows users to download individual scanned images.

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Direct to  USGS Topographic Map Collection

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