Where to find old maps?

Cartography, maps, navigation, GPS and more.
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johnspeth
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Joined: July 30th, 2013, 8:33 am

Where to find old maps?

Post by johnspeth » December 16th, 2019, 7:11 am

I was lucky enough to tour the Library of Congress in Washington, DC last week. The docent stressed their map inventory, including old maps. I like to find forgotten trails using old maps and I figured that since the USGS is a government agency the Library would have the old maps available for viewing. A visit to the Library web site convinced me that old USGS are not available for viewing. I was also surprised to learn that even recent USGS maps are not available for viewing.

Does anybody know how can we obtain old USGS maps that are no longer available?

Why does the US not supply all maps created with taxpayer money in digitized and publicly available form?

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retired jerry
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Joined: May 28th, 2008, 10:03 pm

Re: Where to find old maps?

Post by retired jerry » December 16th, 2019, 7:41 am

did you check https://store.usgs.gov/map-locator

that has a bunch of old versions. You can download them. For free

johnspeth
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Joined: July 30th, 2013, 8:33 am

Re: Where to find old maps?

Post by johnspeth » December 16th, 2019, 8:09 am

retired jerry wrote:
December 16th, 2019, 7:41 am
did you check https://store.usgs.gov/map-locator

that has a bunch of old versions. You can download them. For free
Thanks. That's exactly what I was looking for. I expected the Library of Congress web site to be similarly searchable but it wasn't.

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BurnsideBob
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Joined: May 6th, 2014, 3:15 pm
Location: Mount Angel, Oregon

Re: Where to find old maps?

Post by BurnsideBob » December 16th, 2019, 9:43 am

I like maps. Here's where you can find some:

National Park Maps online: http://npmaps.com/
US Geological Survey map interface: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
USDA--Forest Service Geodata portal: https://data.fs.usda.gov/geodata/raster ... states.php
University of Texas Perry-Castaneda Map Collection (Historical Topo maps, Oregon): https://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/topo ... ml?p=print
Hint: change "oregon" to another state in URL to view the Perry-Castaneda map index for that state.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Burnside
I keep making protein shakes but they always turn out like margaritas.

justpeachy
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Location: Portland, OR
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Re: Where to find old maps?

Post by justpeachy » December 17th, 2019, 8:02 am

Yes, old USGS maps are online. I like to use this tool: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/viewer

Old national forest maps are not easy to find, but the University of Oregon library has a bunch of them if you want to drive down to Eugene.

This thread may be helpful: viewtopic.php?t=25162

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