holy crap - lots of historic USGS topos now online

[NE2]

http://nationalmap.gov/historical/

[WillWeaverRVA]

Holy crap indeed, awesome find. There's lots of really neat stuff on here.

[Takumi]

Wow, great find.

[Hot Rod Hootenanny]

cue facebook like symbol. 

[empirestate]

Oh yeah, I've been rifling through there for a while now! I posted about this a while back, but I don't remember on what forum (might have been m.t.r.). But yes, by the way everyone, USGS is releasing all old historical editions for free online! :-) That might just make up for US Topo...

(Although, I've noticed that the lastest National Map online viewer shows a lot of the data that's lamentably omitted from US Topo, such as corporate limits and MCD boundaries. I've always considered those to be a hallmark of the USGS topo. If only we could get them to keep showing things like California ranchos and Hawaiian ahupua`a...)

[kkt]

This is awesome!  Thanks for the link.

[NE2]

Florida is now up (at least in part).

[empirestate]

It's been fun for me to see how editions have changed over the years...you can even tell things like which map is from the mid-60s because of the deep shade of green they used then, versus the more golden yellow-green hues of the 50s editions. I also never knew there was a 30x30-minute series, at 1:125k scale, around the turn of the century, or that the 1:250k series was published in some areas as folded maps.

You also find gems like the ex-Army Map Service editions of the 40s, showing every building in NYC for example, and the depression-era quads that were produced in collaboration with local governments and probably as some sort of WPA initiative.

In a word, fun for the map geek!

[formulanone]

This calls for Homer's Patented Space-Age Out of This World Moon Waffles:



Great, so much for sleep tonight.

[KEK Inc.]

Cool find!

[F350]

Very nice find.

I'm finding so many railroad beds in old maps that I've never seen/heard. Time to explore...

[SimMoonXP]

I can see the US-395 older alignment on "Poway Valley" topo map in 1942 as Poway was like almost empty town back then in near World War 2 era. US-395 is now I-15 as further west. I-15 is extremely large freeway as more than 12 lanes with 4 lanes express lanes.