The new Historical Topo Map Explorer is out of beta and ready for you to dive into a collection of over 180,000 beautiful vintage USGS topo maps! Use this updated Living Atlas app to geographically browse, download, export, and even animate, these cartographic objects of joy. Here’s how…
0:00 Adventurous introduction
0:23 Navigating the map and finding topos
0:40 Sorting and filtering
0:51 Selecting a topo map
1:07 Downloading or exporting a topo map
1:38 Pinning a collection of topos
2:16 Making and downloading animations
3:22 Draping modern hillshade over vintage topos
3:29 Copying topo details
Many thanks to colleagues Calvin Manning for development, Ken Baloun for management and testing, Jinnan Zhang for development advising, Aileen Buckley for coordinating the topo library, and Philip Royal for service architecture. We hope you use the Historical Topo Map Explorer to find the maps you are looking for, and while you’re at it, plenty of maps you weren’t. When it comes to finding the right map, there’s a lot to be said for stumbling on some treasures along the way.
Love, John
Adventures In Mapping 