Continuing on my current nostalgia trip, I have just published a new map of the vintage USGS DRG Topo's we used twenty years ago. These were the first digital versions of the 24k topo maps available from the USGS. They were also used by terraserver and topozone and I have updated my link translators to use them, for a period-correct experience. There's quite a difference between them and the high-quality USGS historic topographic maps used in the boydsmaps Legacy 24k Topo - you can compare them here
https://boydsmaps.com/sync/#16/39.663498/-74.523647/drg24k/0/0/legacy24k/16/0/0
But these were created in the 1990's, when internet connections were very slow and it was important to reduce the size of images. The maps were scanned at 250 dots per inch, which is similar to the 300 dpi scans of the maps in the historic topo collection, but they severly constrained the palette to only 12 colors, creating a lot of problems. This approach could work well with all-digital maps, but the colors were just not consistent enough on the old paper topo's and it resulted in artifacts and a lack of clarity.
But in spite of their shortcomings, I think they are historically significant enough to justify inclusion at boydsmaps. Like other recent maps, they cover the US Midatlantic region. Although these maps were available everywhere twenty years ago, in 2025 it was a challenge to find download sources. The core of the map actually consists of terraserver data that I downloaded with the USAPhotoMaps program back around 2004! See the Map Info for more details.
https://boydsmaps.com/sync/#16/39.663498/-74.523647/drg24k/0/0/legacy24k/16/0/0
But these were created in the 1990's, when internet connections were very slow and it was important to reduce the size of images. The maps were scanned at 250 dots per inch, which is similar to the 300 dpi scans of the maps in the historic topo collection, but they severly constrained the palette to only 12 colors, creating a lot of problems. This approach could work well with all-digital maps, but the colors were just not consistent enough on the old paper topo's and it resulted in artifacts and a lack of clarity.
But in spite of their shortcomings, I think they are historically significant enough to justify inclusion at boydsmaps. Like other recent maps, they cover the US Midatlantic region. Although these maps were available everywhere twenty years ago, in 2025 it was a challenge to find download sources. The core of the map actually consists of terraserver data that I downloaded with the USAPhotoMaps program back around 2004! See the Map Info for more details.
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