Jelf
Buck Fawn
Everyone interested in habitat improvement likes maps, right? A few years the USGS made high quality scans of just about *all* the paper topo maps they ever printed. These scans are now called “Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC)”. Below is a link to download any of those hi-res topo scans for free. If you see something that asks for money then you clicked the wrong thing. Back up and try again.
http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/maps/TopoView/
As the USGS completed those scans, software developer Matt Jacobs (1) obtained a copy of the scan for the most recent paper topo for everywhere in the USA, (2) wrote code to process that data into map ‘tiles’, and (3) put all those tiles online. These are the highest resolution topo maps online in a seamless interface.
Matt then wrote software called CalTopo that runs in your browser and displays the high resolution topo map tiles that he produced. Below is a link to Matt’s software.
https://caltopo.com/map.html
Matt has graciously allowed some other software developers to also display his topo map tiles. The map viewer that I developed is called Gmap4 and here are the links:
Default map: https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php
Homepage: https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.html
Both CalTopo and Gmap4 are what I describe as an ‘enhanced Google map viewer.’ They both are based on the familiar google map interface combined with whatever features Matt or I felt like adding. Both viewers have some of the same features and each has some unique features.
When people in forums like this one talk about free map viewers, CalTopo and Gamp4 are the two that are mentioned the most often. To the best of my knowledge, Matt and I are the two developers that have produced free viewers based on Google maps and who are continuing to add truly useful features. Note that while most of CalTopo is free, Matt has recently started to charge for certain features. But hey - the guy has provided a tremendous benefit for all of us and deserves to generate some income from his work.
So if you like maps, check out CalTopo and Gmap4. Pick the one you like or use ’em both. And if you have any questions about Gmap4, please post them in this thread because your buddy wants to know the same thing and we all know he’s too shy to post the question.
Joseph Elfelt
https://mappingsupport.com
http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/maps/TopoView/
As the USGS completed those scans, software developer Matt Jacobs (1) obtained a copy of the scan for the most recent paper topo for everywhere in the USA, (2) wrote code to process that data into map ‘tiles’, and (3) put all those tiles online. These are the highest resolution topo maps online in a seamless interface.
Matt then wrote software called CalTopo that runs in your browser and displays the high resolution topo map tiles that he produced. Below is a link to Matt’s software.
https://caltopo.com/map.html
Matt has graciously allowed some other software developers to also display his topo map tiles. The map viewer that I developed is called Gmap4 and here are the links:
Default map: https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php
Homepage: https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.html
Both CalTopo and Gmap4 are what I describe as an ‘enhanced Google map viewer.’ They both are based on the familiar google map interface combined with whatever features Matt or I felt like adding. Both viewers have some of the same features and each has some unique features.
When people in forums like this one talk about free map viewers, CalTopo and Gamp4 are the two that are mentioned the most often. To the best of my knowledge, Matt and I are the two developers that have produced free viewers based on Google maps and who are continuing to add truly useful features. Note that while most of CalTopo is free, Matt has recently started to charge for certain features. But hey - the guy has provided a tremendous benefit for all of us and deserves to generate some income from his work.
So if you like maps, check out CalTopo and Gmap4. Pick the one you like or use ’em both. And if you have any questions about Gmap4, please post them in this thread because your buddy wants to know the same thing and we all know he’s too shy to post the question.
Joseph Elfelt
https://mappingsupport.com
