Posted: 9/5/2015 6:46:05 PM EDT
| I have been talking to my dad and he is wanting to visit the old (pre-civil war era) homestead he last saw as a young child. The area used to be a popular cut-thru 150 years ago but the route has long been abandoned. Problem is I can't find a topo map that list items like structures, graves, mines, etc. I have been on the USGS website and am able to download the hi-res .PDFs but they don't include structures. I ran across a topo type map years ago with the location of the house, and can't find it now. The location is south of Cliffield Mountain in NC for anybody interested. Any ideas or resources? |
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Go here
It is the GIS data depot. What you do is find the location of the map you want and download it for free. You don't need a GIS system to view the maps. They are downloadable as TIFF files and opened like a picture and you can zoom in and out. http://data.geocomm.com/catalog/ Back when I was a Situation Unit leader for a Type 1 Incident Management Team (the guy who made maps for the fires), I could go here and find about any map I needed and it was free. What you are looking for are the 1:24k topos (commonly called the 7 1/2 minute quads), they are the older maps that showed structures on the maps. If not, the 1:100k should have the major features on them. Usually you can get them from the site for free, due to their age. If you have any problems, PM me and I will help you. I did this stuff in the summer for about 15 years, and watched the world of mapping go from paper products to digital products printed on paper incorporating the use of GIS. I still have an account at the site, with several gigs of data I can purchase. Here is a zoomable map of the area in question. https://www.topoquest.com/map.php?lat=35.31250&lon=-82.31250&datum=nad27&zoom=32 |
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Here is the quad. Unfortunately, to export it to JPG format so photobucket would accept it, I had to reduce the size of it. It is somewhat grainy. I can email
the original map if you need it. 
I went back to the website and the map covers both counties so what your looking for should be on the map. |
| Old topos are great fun. I like the ones from the 1920s series around here, a lot of farms and homesteads were abandoned and turned to state land around here in the 1930s. You can use the old maps to find them. I wish I had a way to "flip" from the old topos to current ones and to satellite photos, back and forth. ( while having them all as different layers)To me that would be an ultimate app. |
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Quoted:
Old topos are great fun. I like the ones from the 1920s series around here, a lot of farms and homesteads were abandoned and turned to state land around here in the 1930s. You can use the old maps to find them. I wish I had a way to "flip" from the old topos to current ones and to satellite photos, back and forth. ( while having them all as different layers)To me that would be an ultimate app. I have an app on my ipad - Trimble Outdoors My Topo Maps - that allows you to have a main layer and an overlay. You can choose what the layers are, for example you can select a topo map as the main layer and sat image as the overlay. You then have a slider that is a continuum from your main layer on one end to your overlay on the other end - you can adjust the slider so that both are visible overlayed on each other. There is also a way to overlay topo maps on google earth, I have a link somewhere that walks you through it. I'll try to find it. |