Maps & Routes
The Cartography of the Fire Perimeter
Wildfire perimeter maps look definitive on the page. The cartographers who make them know they are provisional documents, drawn in conditions that change faster than the ink can dry.
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cartography
Maps & Routes
The Trail Association Mapmakers Who Aren't Paid
Across the United States, the practical maps that hikers carry are not made by the government. They are made by trail associations, mostly by volunteers, often by retirees with cartography software and a willingness to argue about line weights.
Maps & Routes
The Last Commercial Cartographer in Maine
In a converted barn outside Brunswick, Maine, a sixty-one-year-old man draws topographic maps by hand for clients who still pay for them. He is, by his own reckoning, the last full-time commercial cartographer working in the state.
Maps & Routes
The Quad Stewards Still Walking the Grid
A small program inside the USGS keeps the 7.5-minute topographic series honest. In 2026 it relies on roughly four hundred volunteers who walk their own quad once a year and send back red ink.