# 2026-05-24 - Topo Maps
It's that time of the year again. Around Memorial Day i begin to
daydream of camping, hiking, and other outdoor pursuits. It was
brought on a little earlier this year by reading The Footpath Way
where English people with money walked from inn to inn, having
luxurious baths, home-brew ale, and hearty meals at inns along the
way. If i were a rich man (so to sing), i would definitely be up
for some civilized walking in England or on the Camino de Santiago.
Alas, local paths are more my speed.
A friend told me that it's fairly common for men to let themselves
go physically, but to imagine that if they ever wanted to, they could
always re-enact movie work-out scenes where they lift a lot of
weight, run many miles, etc. and get back into the same condition as
in the prime of their lives. He said there comes a point when an
older man realizes that he will never regain that youthful vigor.
I am not a body builder, but i have memories of extreme experiences,
usually solo, in treacherous terrain. I've hiked narrow trails
through steep slopes "cleared" by wildfires and had to climb over or
crawl under windfall with a cliff below me and a steep incline above.
Usually i would remove my pack and maneuver it separately from my
body. Twice i've biked up the west side of the Cascade mountains and
coasted down the east side on pavement. Twice i've done the same in
the Coastal mountains and the Cascade foothills on loose gravel
logging roads. It's a minor miracle i never had an accident. If i
had crashed at those speeds, in that terrain, i would have been
instantly vaporized. Survival unlikely. But with testosterone and
youthful invulnerability, my memories were fun and exhilarating.
When planning wilderness hikes i used to plan on a *minimum* of
10 miles per day regardless of elevation gain or loss. If i
over-exerted myself i could take a day of rest somewhere. My
attitude was "Let me at it!"
While those are pleasant memories, i can accept that they are not to
be re-lived. Now i will plan for a *maximum* of 10 miles per day,
and i will be mindful of the elevation change. Also, due to
transportation constraints, i won't insist on wilderness. I'll keep
my recreation within my means.
So i spent a few pleasant evenings poring over topographic maps. It
uses a different part of my brain, which can be fun. It's helpful to
look at multiple maps of the same area. Sometimes old maps show
what's not present on new ones and vice versa.
Where i live we have some defunct county parks due to loss of
O&C funds. Many of those parks are still there, just with locked
gates and nature is slowly reclaiming the very pavement in the
parking lots. They can make ideal places to scratch camp for 1 night
on the way from point A to point B. Satellite images can partially
confirm the condition of locations, and show where the tree cover is
or isn't.
In the year 2000 the US government made a topo map dataset available
for download on the Internet. I downloaded a copy of all the quads
in Oregon and burned them to CD's and added "write a map program" to
my to-do list. In 2007 i finally got around writing a map program.
I used Tcl/Tk. I called it "maptoy" and it's for private use. The
map images come from the mid 1980's.
In the past i used sites like gpx.studio and caltopo.com to create
maps, export to JPG, and import into Maprika. This would use my
phone's GPS to show my location on the map. It worked great, but
required a great deal of fiddling around ahead of time. Well worth
it IMHO! But Maprika doesn't work correctly on my current phone and
all of the alternatives are manipulative and cost money.
Now i K.I.S.S. and either use official USFS or USGS quad images, or i
generate my own images from "maptoy" and mark them up in The Gimp.
If i'm not in the wilderness, i don't need the GPS functionality.
No GPS conserves battery life too. I just load my homebrew maps in a
stock image or PDF viewer, look for landmarks, and off i go.
The main downside is when hiking through the corner of a quad, it can
get fiddly switching between 4 different PDF's. With some practice,
one gets used to it.
I'll still mark up my course through gpx.studio to learn the distance
and elevation change. Remarkable to think i used to estimate these
things in my head by looking at curves of trail lines and counting
numbers of topo lines on paper maps! My mental estimates were quite
rough; ballpark figures, so to say.
# Quads
The phrase "quads" is important. It's short for quadrangle [1], and
it refers to an area of topographical map space. The libremap [2]
site (archived) lists quad names and coordinates per state.
# USGS 7.5 Minute Topo Maps
USGS quad maps can be downloaded for free [3]. The web site requires
features not present in older web browsers. I use chromium-ungoogled
for this.
Steps:
* Open USGS Map Downloader
* Click [Custom Views]
* Click [View All]
* Find "Datasets" tab in the top of the left panel
* Under "Map" section, check the box next to US Topo
* Find the map in the right panel
* Use the +/- buttons at the top left to zoom to desired location
* Find "Area of interest:" section in left panel
* Click the [Extent] button
* Drag to select an area of interest
* In the left panel, click [Search Products]
* This will list quadrant maps in the left panel
* Find desired quadrant(s)
* Click the Download link
The downloads are in Geospatial PDF format, but they display fine in
my conventional PDF viewer.
# USFS 7.5 Minute Topo Maps
USFS maps can be downloaded for free [4], and the site requires
features not present in older web browsers. I use chromium-ungoogled
for this.
Pro: has trails and landmarks not present in USGS maps
Con: only maps national forests, a sub-set of USGS maps
Steps:
* Visit USFS Map Web Site
* Click [Find your digital map]
* Click (FSTopo) or (FSTopo Legacy)
* Find the map under the Interactive Map Download section
* Use the +/- buttons at the top left to zoom to desired location
* Click on desired quad
* Click Download PDF link
# Unofficial Maps
You can also find archived copies of old maps on archive.org [5]
and in the USGS historic maps viewer [6]. OpenStreetMap [7] has a
surprising amount of outdoor data too. I'm afraid all of this is
JS-only and only for viewing in corporate-blessed mainstream web
browsers, but you can save PDF's for sneakernet and offline use.
tags: outdoor
# Footnotes
TEXT [1] Quadrangle
HTML [2] LibreMap Data
HTML [3] USGS Map Downloader
HTML [4] USFS Map Web Site
HTML [5] Archived USGS Maps
HTML [6] Historic USGS Maps
HTML [7] OpenStreetMap
# Tags
DIR outdoor