Maps

USGS Fact Sheet 03501 (March 2001)

A map projection is used to portray all or part of the round Earth on a flat surface. This document gives the key properties, characteristics, and preferred uses of many historically important projections and of those frequently used by mapmakers today.

USGS Fact Sheet 015-02 (February 2002). To be most useful, a map must show locations and distances accurately on a sheet of paper of convenient size. The proportion chosen for a particular map is its scale.

Topographic maps contain contour lines that represent the Earth’s surface. The maps also include symbols that represent streets, buildings, streams, and woods.

Links to more reference sources (e.g., gazetteers, distance calculators, glossaries and guides).

The Elevation Point Query Service returns the elevation in international feet or meters for a specific latitude/longitude (NAD 1983) point from the USGS 3DEP 1/3 arc-second layer hosted at the NGTOC.

This site is helpful if you already know the name of the quadrangle or the USGS product number. Entries for each map include a thumbnail image (if available); coordinates; and dates of version, survey, revisions, and printing. County names are not included. You can order copies of maps online from this site.

The term “US Topo” refers specifically to quadrangle topographic maps published in 2009 and later. These maps are modeled on the familiar 7.5-minute quadrangle maps of the period 1947-1992, but are mass-produced from national GIS databases on a repeating cycle. US Topo maps repackage geographic information system (GIS) data in traditional map form; this benefits non-specialist map users, as well as applications that need traditional maps.

"Here you will find one of the greatest historical atlases: Charles O. Paullin and John K. Wright's Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States, first published in 1932. This digital edition reproduces all of the atlas's nearly 700 maps. Many of these beautiful maps are enhanced here in ways impossible in print, animated to show change over time or made clickable to view the underlying data—remarkable maps produced eight decades ago with the functionality of the twenty-first century."

The Atlas of Rural and Small-Town America provides statistics by broad categories of socioeconomic factors: People, Jobs, County classifications, Income, and Veterans.

For all 50 states, access Shaded relief maps, County maps, Black and white maps, PostScript maps, Satellite images, and an 1895 map.

A thematic atlas (last updated in 2003) covering topics such as: Socio-Economic trends, Timelines, Systems of Government, Population, War, Europe, America, Asia, Africa, International Relations, and more.

The Atlas features more than 300,000 historic site records, including Historical Marker inscriptions and National Register of Historic Places property photos. Includes interactive digital maps showing site locations.

A free, publicly available data library of watershed indicators and a decision-support tool, developed by EPA, to assist resource managers, citizens, and other users with evaluating, comparing, and prioritizing watersheds for a user-defined purpose.

Planetary nomenclature, like terrestrial nomenclature, is used to uniquely identify a feature on the surface of a planet or satellite so that the feature can be easily located, described, and discussed. This gazetteer contains detailed information about all names of topographic and albedo features on planets and satellites (and some planetary ring and ring-gap systems) that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has named and approved from its founding in 1919 through the present time.

Overseen by the U.S. Board on Geographic names. The GNIS contains information about almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States. The Federally recognized name of each feature described in the database is identified, and references are made to a feature’s location by State, county, and geographic coordinates. Also included are Foreign Names, Antarctic Names, and Undersea Features.

Provides access to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) database of foreign geographic feature names. Coverage is worldwide, excluding the United States and Antarctica. Update on a bi-weekly schedule. The information in this database is based in part on copyrighted source material. Copyright restrictions continue to exist.