The Historical Topographic Map Collection: USGS Maps From 1884 to 2006, Scanned

"A government cannot do any scientific work of more value to the people at large than by causing the construction of proper topographic maps of the country."
— John Wesley Powell to Congress, December 5, 1888

"Cartographers in the field," an oil painting by Hal Shelton, 1940, showing early mapping tools: an alidade and stadia rod for distances and elevations, and a plane table for sketching contours. Photo: Terry Carr, USGS.

The project

For more than 125 years, USGS topographic maps have portrayed the Nation's geography. The USGS is the country's largest maker of traditional topographic maps; until 2006 they were drawn by traditional cartographic methods and printed by lithography.

The USGS National Geospatial Program is scanning every published USGS topographic map at 1:250,000 scale or larger, printed between 1884 — when the mapping program began — and 2006. Since 2011, the Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC) has put them online free.

• Why: historical maps sit in few collections and are hard for the public to reach.
• Two goals: a master catalog and digital archive of the irreplaceable maps in the USGS Map Library in Reston, Virginia — and public access to view and download them.
• Formats: GeoTIFF and GeoPDF.

Why old maps matter

Topographic maps remain essential for science and history, land management, recreation and more. Scientists, historians, environmentalists and genealogists use old maps because they show a place as it was when printed. A series of maps of one area can show how it looked as early as 1884, before modern development — and how it changed.

What makes the collection useful

• Cataloged: each scan comes with complete, machine-readable metadata.
• Scanned as is: each map's content and condition are captured.
• Georeferenced: tied to a known coordinate system, so users can click to measure distance and area or read coordinates — and import the map into a GIS to overlay it with other data, such as from The National Map. Research on change over time is a growing use.
• Preserves what's gone: maps no longer in print, or being replaced by the new US Topo maps.

Viewing: the GeoPDFs open in most PDF software; their geospatial tools need Adobe Acrobat Reader with the free TerraGo Toolbar for Windows. GeoTIFFs carry embedded metadata. Paper copies can be bought from the USGS Store, and more files are added as they're ready.

A Massachusetts map from 1893 — the first State to join the Cooperative Topographic Mapping Program. USGS.

What the program does

• Offers downloadable, viewable files of about 200,000 scanned maps, with metadata meeting Federal Geographic Data Committee standards.
• Provides historical paper maps in electronic form alongside US Topo.
• Keeps the catalog of every historical map the USGS has scanned and published.
• Writes specifications for scanning, and methods for accurate, high-resolution, georeferenced scans.
• Archives the files with the National Archives and the Library of Congress.

Get the maps (free): topoView · The National Map Downloader · USGS Store · HTMC information · questions: nationalmap@usgs.gov

Sources

Based on Scanning and Georeferencing Historical USGS Quadrangles, USGS Fact Sheet 2017–3048 (superseding Fact Sheet 2011–3009), U.S. Geological Survey; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Powell's words, the painting and the 1893 map are taken from the fact sheet's PDF, which the import had left out.