Over the past few months we’ve created some maps that are related to outdoor recreation and trails. While not guides for public recreation areas, they represent smaller cartography projects we like to do. The maps use GPS-captured data, aerial photography, and a slight 3D rendering technique to give the maps a unique and intuitive representation of the geography.

The image on the left is a screen-capture of the Town Branch Trail Plan. The trail is a proposed greenway that connects downtown Lexington, Kentucky with distant Masterson Station Park, one of the city’s largest park. The aerial photography is derived from high-resolution, 2ft-pixel imagery, and is accentuated by a subtle 3D relief. Lexington spreads over a large anticline, a geological feature characterized by a broad uplift of land, and causes the situation that most streams flow away from the center of the city. Elevation relief in the downtown area is slight, but increases dramatically as one approaches the Kentucky River to west and south. Future plans for the map are adding more interactive features, such as pop-up info boxes.

The map to the right is part of 3-part map project for Red River Gorge Cabin Rentals, an exclusive resort area in the Red River Gorge. The maps were a 2D, 3D, and Google map showing cabins, trails, and roads. We GPS-captured roads and trails and created a simple shaded relief map for generic directions, and a more artistic 3D aerial photographic map of the resort.

Here is a quote from their website, “Located in the heart of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky lies a paradise of natural stone arches, caves, rock shelters and towering cliffs all encircling steep, forested slopes overlooking narrow stream valleys.” You can visit thier website here.

Lunch-time excursions to Forest Park. That’s how I spent my free time at the North American Cartographic Information Society conference in St. Louis. While it was exciting to see new maps and presentations about cartographic history and even making maps, I had to visit a prominent swath of green on my St. Louis Map.

Enter Forest Park; an urban park established after the Civil War and used as the site for the 1904 World’s Fair. Today you can freely walk along a sculpted archipelago of scenic lakes & historic monuments, freely visit an art museum and fantastically intimate zoo. I wish my city had a Forest Park.

Some photos: http://www.outragegis.com/pixel/071009_14-ForestParkMO
note: these photos were shot with a camera phone, so at best they’re distinctive.

We’re developing our latest map for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and we had a question. As a hiker and user of maps, do you prefer a detailed GEO graticule (you know…the degrees, minutes, seconds…) or do you prefer the military grid, UTM, which is in meters?

We have both on most of our maps, but which would you use most?

Of course the graticule would be most useful with a GPS unit in default configuration. If you choose a GEO graticule, do your prefer units in decimal minutes (e.g., 36° 45.35′) or decimal degrees (e.g., 84.2546°).