TopoView highlights one of the USGS's most important and useful products, the topographic map. In 1879, the USGS began to map the Nation's topography. This mapping was done at different levels of detail, in order to support various land use and other purposes. As the years passed, the USGS produced new map versions of each area. The most current map of each area is available from The National Map. TopoView shows the many and varied older maps of each area, and so is especially useful for historical purposes—for example, the names of some natural and cultural features have changed over time, and the historical names can be found on many of these topographic maps.

This interface was created by the National Geologic Map Database project (NGMDB), in support of the topographic mapping program, managed by the USGS National Geospatial Program (NGP). Geologic and topographic mapping have a long tradition together (see 1888 report). The NGMDB project is proud to assist the NGP in bringing these maps to the Web.

Chris Garrity
Chris leads a variety of GIScience themed projects throughout the U.S. Geological Survey. Chris served as the topoView development lead.

Rob Wardwell
Rob is a developer for the National Geologic Map Database project. Over the last decade, he's been focused on improving the accessibility of geologic map data to the public.

Dave Soller
Dave is Chief of the National Geologic Map Database project, and serves to help define the focus of topoView.

US Topo Series added to topoView
We've added the US Topo series to topoView, giving users access to over 3 million downloadable files from 2009 to the present day. The US Topo series is a latest generation of topographic maps modeled on the USGS historical 7.5-minute series (created from 1947-1992). Like the historical topographic mapping collection, we've added a variety of file formats previously unavailable for the US Topo series, including GeoTIFF and KMZ.

New functionality driven by your feedback
The latest version of topoView is full of enhancements based on hundreds of your comments and suggestions. We've added the ability to preview maps within the interface and give you tools to compare any historical map with maps of the present. Filters and searches work seamlessly with the map records table to get you the info you need with fewer clicks. Accessing the information you need is easier and quicker than ever. As always, your feedback is important to us so don't hesitate to let us know what you'd like to see in future releases!