The exceptional online resources of the Perry-Casta�eda Library of the University of Texas at Austin provide a series of topographic maps created by the US Army Map Service. They date primarily from the 1940s and 1950s, so they are more detailed in areas of military concern during and after World War II. You can see the full TABLE OF CONTENTS. The USGS quadrangles are listed in the USA INDEX.

While the maps are somewhat outdated, they are excellent for locating tiny villages, finding islands which are not visible or named, and obtaining topographic details.

When using them in conjunction with Google Earth, it is often rather difficult to quickly find the specific map which covers an area of interest. This posting is designed to provide both the global area quadrangles and the city maps which show far greater details.

(The download file is only about 116 KB.)

With the addition of many 1:1,000,000 scale maps, Version 16 provides a set of 3,652 rectangles, with 4,518 clickable links in the icon bubbles which will load the relevent maps in your browser.

• BLUE: Quads, 2,522 rectangles with links to 3,318 maps, scale = 1 : 250,000
  
  
  
  
• RED: World, 479 maps, scale = 1 : 1,000,000
  
  
  
  
• GREEN: Africa, 31 maps, scale = 1 : 2,000,000
  
  
  
  
• YELLOW: 690 City Maps have been provided globally. The east Asian region is illustrated here:
  
  
  

Sample: The following area in South Africa shows a large green Africa-36 map (1:2,000,000), three red World maps (SH 35, SH 36, and SI 35 at 1:1,000,000), many small blue quadrangles (1:250,000), and three yellow city maps (Bloemfontein, Durban, and East London).

Nice. If someone georeferences them, I'll create SuperOverlays and import them into Google Earth.

Matt

Forkboy2,

Quote:

---

Nice. If someone georeferences them, I'll create SuperOverlays and import them into Google Earth.

---

If you examine them, you will see that the maps are various forms of conical projections, not rectangular Mercator projections. They only approximate projectable images in the equatorial regions, and would not lend themselves to significant orthorectification. Their margins would need to be removed if they were to be used in adjacent pairs, and in some cases copyright issues would have to be addressed.

Sorry I'm replying again before my last reply got approved. But here is a sample to show that it's not all that difficult to import these into Google Earth. This took me about 10 minutes. I first georeferenced to Polyconic Projection. Then converted to Geographic Projection. Then created SuperOverlay. Then uploaded to Server. Would take less time per image if done in batches.