Draw Custom Routes Using USGS Topo Maps
November 14th, 2007
In honor of National GIS Day today (November 14, 2007), we’d like to talk a little bit about a new feature that we rolled out a few weeks ago when we added United States Geographical Survey (USGS) topographic map viewing capabilities to Thoos. You can now create running, cycling, hiking maps of your favorite trails and off-road destinations with ease.
Creating online maps of your favorite routes is nothing new on the web. We have offered the ability to create and save online maps using Google Maps technology for the past year. However, it has always been a pain-in-the-butt to trace routes that went off-road. Using the Google Maps satellite layer you could use an aerial photograph to help you draw your route, but it was not always very helpful or accurate. Now you can select the “Topo” layer on Thoos maps to help you draw accurate off-road routes.
When you zoom all the way in, you will see a series of seamlessly stitched 7.5-minute, 1:24,000-scale quadrangle maps. A scale of 1:25,000 is used for maps based on metric units (1 centimeter = 0.25 kilometer). So, you can get easy access to view thousands of established trails, fire roads, jeep roads, and topographic features that USGS maps provide.
Take it for a spin and create a custom map for your next adventure!