Found some great new maps!

[SwampHunter]

I was at the local Soil Conservation office the other day asking about stream flow maps. They didn't have exactly what I was looking for but the guy let me take all of the maps of the area that they had.

I recieved topos, aerials, and various other type maps. One type in particular was 1:24,000 scale maps of the county that showed streams and rivers in blue and also showed the soil types in each area. The maps looked like a huge paint by number(actually letters representing soil type) with the streams and creeks in blue. At first I didn't think this map would help me much. I got it in my head that I would darken the streams and fill in the lakes with a blue marker. Then I would take a correction pen and white-out all of the other lines. This would then give me exactly what I want. Well as I was laying out all of the water I noticed a certain group of letters and recognized this to be what is swampland in the region. Knowing that I wanted these areas marked too I went ahead and started coloring them in with a blue-green colored marker.
In my area the only development that has impacted the area has been within the last 20 years. This would be in the from of laser-leveling. These maps were made before the age of laser-leveling so pretty much what I have shows very little change since the Civil War.
These maps are the same scale as the topo maps I have. I have been mapping out the roads, camps and such from the Civil War on some topos I have. I will be able to transfer these to the new maps without having alot of topo lines or modern roads cluttering the new map. After it's complete I can take it and have it copied and also have it downsized as well to have a copy that I can use in the truck. I figure this is the next best thing to having actual Civil War engineer maps.


He gave me a web address and told me that these maps should be on the website. The website is:
http://websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov/app/

I am on dial-up so I can't really get the site to work fast enough to check it out. If nothing else you can always drop by your local Soil Conservation office and check with them.

Hopefully this will help someone in their area.

[WormtownHunter]

Nice find, this will be very helpful to me. Thanks!

[sassyrockhunter]

Think i have one of these books that a fellow rock hunter gave me i just was unsure how to use it.. how did you find out when the maps where made in it?

Denise

[SwampHunter]

Mine are not in a book. In fact each map is about the same size as a sheet of posterboard. For my county there are 16 sheets that make up the whole county.
The date on mine are in the lower left hand corner.