In Memoriam

To the Topographic Division of the US Geological Survey. The dedicated team of surveyors, photogrammetrists, photographers and cartographers who, for half a century, worked tirelessly to complete the coverage of the conterminous United States with detailed topographic maps at a scale useful to all levels of the public and private sectors for reconnaissance, planning, education and recreation.

The following is from an article that appeared in
The Palo Alto Times on February 19, 1964.
In the air and in the field--
Mapmakers cover every inch of state
Every Geological Survey map of the nation’s land area starts with an airplane an aerial camera.
Three and half to four years and $3,800 later, incredibly accurate quadrangle maps covering 7-1/2 minute or 15 minute sections of latitude and longitude are available to the public at the Survey’s map counters for 30 cents each. Although the average 7-1/2 minute map, the best seller of the survey’s maps, costs $3,800 to make, 7-1/2 minute maps of the suburban Palo Alto, Menlo Park and Atherton area, for example, cost $15,000.
Roy F. Thurston of 460 Golden Oak Drive, Portola Valley, the acting head of the Pacific Coast Center’s topographic division, speaks with pride when he tells the Geological Survey’s maps are the "basis of all U.S. maps."
From Menlo Park, 150 field parties range across the eight Western states, Hawaii and Alaska, carrying out mapping operations. In the summer they work in the north; in winter, the south. On foot, by truck and by helicopter, they traverse mountains, deserts and valleys, surveying, determining elevations, and amassing the data necessary to make a map.
At the survey’s Menlo Park headquarters, the data gathered by the field survey parties is assembled in map form by skilled photogrammetrists. Working with stereoplotters, they match the aerial photos with match the aerial photos with known points and transfer the three-dimensional aspects of the photos on a negative of the aerial photo printed on a glass plate. Ninety of these photogrammetric booths, each containing stereoplotter equipment costing more than $8,000, are in use at Menlo Park. For some terrain, the photogrammetrist can do all the compilation necessary to create a map. However, if the area is heavily forested, for example, he is unable to see the terrain contours hidden by the forest cover in the photograph.
This contour information, gathered by the field survey parties, is "scribed" into the map plate by highly skilled scribers with needle-like tools. These scribers also create six separate drawings for each map--one for each color used in its printing. The incredibly detailed drawings, traced over each line with an accuracy of a thousandth of an inch, show all contour lines, streams, highways or roads and settlements. "Stick up" artists stick the names of settlements on the maps. After constant checking, review by editors and comments from map authorities and users who have seen the proofs, the maps finally are printed in Washington D.C.
Thurston never can remember receiving a letter or call questioning the physical accuracy of a map. The survey has received complaints on the changing names of streams and roadways, he said. "We get more complaints on those than anything else."
So valuable is the basic information required for maps that a special valut is an essential part of the topographic division’s Menlo Park facility. Its loaded shelves contain map material valued at $26 million.
At least $5 million is spent every year by the Geological Survey on topographic mapping operations being carried out by the Survey’s Menlo Park Pacific Coast Center. Thurston said the immense job of mapping the United States is now only 65 percent complete. "We hope to be finished by 1981," he said.
California is the only western state which has been 100 percent mapped, he said. Topographical mapping is carried out by the survey throughout the United States on a cooperative basis with the states, he said. Thanks to California’s matching funds of $350,000 yearly for the last 15 years, the state has been mapped completely. The maps are used extensively by engineers of the California Department of Water Resources to compute "land, snow and water quantities," he said.
Although the Geological Survey maps are the priceless tools of engineers, builders and other mapmakers, the hunter, fisherman, and ordinary citizen who likes to see the lay of the land where they live are high on the list of the survey’s satisfied map customers.
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A final word . . .
Similar operations took place in three other regional field offices of the Topographic Division located in Colorado, Missouri and Virginia.
Mapping technology has advanced and the Topographic Division is gone, but it leaves a legacy of having served as a vital part of the Federal government to meet a National need.