1800s Topo Maps

Clay Diggins

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Nov 14, 2010
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U.S. Topo maps date back to 1884. Those were very low resolution maps at a 1:250,000 scale at best (4 mile resolution) and most were 1:500,000 (8 mile resolution) or 1:1,000,000 (16 mile resolution).

It wasn't until 1947 that the maps that we know today as "topos" began to be made. Those modern 1:24000 topo maps have a best resolution of 40 foot. Those were made until 1992. Most areas had several topo updates through that 45 year period.

Around some of the major cities, including Little Rock, there are a few earlier 1:24000 topo maps that date as early as 1935.

You can find and download every topo ever made on the Land Matters Topo download map.

Go to the Land Matters Topo Search Map. Zoom in to your area by clicking and dragging a box around the area you want to study.

Then

Click on the "i" tool on the right of the map.
Click on your area of interest.
In the window that pops up will be an row named 24k Standard Topos. Click on the link that says Click for Historical Scanned Topo Maps.
A new page will open with links to download any historical 1:24000 topo made for your area.

There are checkboxes for lower resolution historic topos to the right of the map. Click one or all of those checkboxes and use the "i" tool again and you will get more topo maps to download.

From this one map you can download any topo made for you area of interest.

Easy enough?
 

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tcmcauley1271

Greenie
May 31, 2020
16
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Oak Ridge, TN
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Just bought my Garrett AT Max. Going to play with the settings this winter and get out this spring into East Tennessee.
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Here is a site that I use for 1800's topos, it is run by the USGS so the maps are of a good quality and are in PDF format, you can download for free and have printed. https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/
 

delnorter

Hero Member
Oct 28, 2008
906
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Northern California
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Land Matters is a great library of information. Actually it’s the best land resource repository I’ve ever used.

I haven’t check your files Barry, but here in the northwest corner of California, we have USGS Topos at 1:125000 scale dated 1922 that are pretty detailed as well. Contour interval is 100 feet. It’s pretty interesting seeing the changes here along the Smith River watershed. “Preston Peak” is a good example.

Mike
 

Noah_D

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Dec 14, 2017
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Illinois (prev. NE Ohio)
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Nokta Makro Simplex+, Garrett ACE 300, Carrot
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It's been too long to edit my post but I would just like to add that these websites will usually have county maps going back to mid 1800s, they aren't topos but if all you want is an old map they definitely do the job.
 

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