Where, on the Internet, can I find the following kinds of maps:
(1) Counties (only)
(2) Cities and towns (only), clearly showing city and town limits.

Many maps try to show everything, resulting in clutter.

I'd like to see a map that shows only the counties that are in a given area,
or only the cities and towns.

For example, I live in the Tampa Bay area of Florida. 
St Petersburg is in Pinellas county, and Tampa is in Hillsborough county.
But where exactly are the city boundaries?  
Does St Petersburg occupy Pinellas county completely?

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 16 May 2005 15:07 PDT

Are you interested just in Florida maps, or maps anywhere in the country?

If the latter, such maps are available, but they are a bit clumsy to
make use of.  There might be a friendlier source of information that
is specific to Florida, but I need to know your druthers, first.

Thanks,

pafalafa-ga

---

Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 16 May 2005 15:07 PDT

Do you just need maps for your area; for Florida; or for cities and
counties throughout the United States?

---

Clarification of Question by rambler-ga on 16 May 2005 16:33 PDT

I was hoping for a general solution so that I could find such maps for
any part of the USA.

However, if that's not practical, then I'd be satisfied with maps for
the Tampa Bay area.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 17 May 2005 07:19 PDT

Hello rambler-ga,

Originally, I was also going to link you to the census maps, but I
agree -- they are cluttered and hard to work with.

There are a number of build-your-own map tools on the web that can
show county/city borders, but they all suffer from a number of serious
shortcomings as well.

The best solution might be these maps, here:


http://www.johnnyroadtrip.com/cities/tampa/maps/map_tampa_orlando.htm


They show counties clearly, have a nice balance between detail and
clutter, and can be selected at various zoom levels, for different
views of the area of interest.

Does that look like the sort of thing you were after?

pafalafa-ga

---

Clarification of Question by rambler-ga on 17 May 2005 11:42 PDT

To pafalafa-ga:

Thanks for the link to johnnyroadtrip.com.  That map, though, does not
clearly show the city limits for Tampa. (Take a look at the census
map, and you'll see that johnnyroadtrip must have included all the
suburbs, making Tampa look much bigger than it actually is.)

I like the color, but I really need accurate city limits.

Thanks again for your help.
Rambler-ga

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 17 May 2005 17:14 PDT

OK, I'm not giving up on this one!!!

Take a look at the map labelled Inset H (page 20 of the PDF):


http://ftp2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/cousub_outline/cen2k


and let me know what you think.


paf

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 17 May 2005 17:24 PDT

Ooops.  The link should be:


http://ftp2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/cousub_outline/cen2k_pgsz/fl_cosub.pdf


By the way, the Tampa area looks to have some of the wildest boundary
layouts I've yet seen.  What are they up to down there?

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 17 May 2005 17:45 PDT

Ooops...again.  I seem to have given you pretty much the same resource
as the comments, below.  Oh well...back to the drawing board.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 18 May 2005 04:34 PDT

I may finally have it this time.  What do you think of this one:


http://www2.census.gov/plmap/pl_trt/st12_Florida/c12057_Hillsborough/CT12057_000.pdf


For even more detail, there's this as well:

http://www2.census.gov/plmap/pl_trt/st12_Florida/c12057_Hillsborough/CT12057_002.pdf


Let me know what you think.


paf

---

Clarification of Question by rambler-ga on 18 May 2005 06:46 PDT

The first link is good. The second link adds census tracts, which is
just unnecessary clutter.

One problem with the first link is the size of the map. It looks like
it is intended for a large printer, maybe 3' by 4'. When I print it on
letter paper (8.5" by 11"), the map is barely legible. Is there a way
to crop out the legends and shrink the margins so that the main map
fills the entire page? I'm not very experienced with pdf files.

Hillsborough county is on the north and east sides of Tampa Bay.
Please don't forget about the west side:  Pinellas county.

To summarize:
(1) How can I print a legible copy on 8.5" by 11"?
(2) Please provide a similar link for Pinellas county.

I appreciate the effort that you are putting into this research. Thank you so much!

Rambler-ga

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 18 May 2005 06:57 PDT

Printing a copy of just the map is possible, but PDF doesn't make it
simple.  Here are the steps to take:

1.  Adjust the zoom until just the section of the map that you want is
visible on your screen (on my PC, a zoom level of 40% worked pretty
well).

2.  'Select' the area to be printed with the Image Select tool, 
Depending on your version of Adobe, this may be a small camera icon on
the tool bar, or it may simply have the word 'Select'...be sure to use
image select rather than text select, and just drag a box around the
area you want to print.

3.  After selecting, you will have a copy of the map in memory.  Open
up a word processing program like Word or WordPerfect, and paste the
image to a page.

4.  Is needed, you can then re-size it, and print it.


Let me know how that works out.


Pinellas County is here:


http://www2.census.gov/plmap/pl_trt/st12_Florida/c12103_Pinellas/CT12103_000.pdf


and you can find similar maps for pretty much any county in the country.  


Are we there yet?

paf

---

Clarification of Question by rambler-ga on 18 May 2005 08:11 PDT

Yes, we are there.  Thank you!  Please post your answer.

rambler-ga,

First...let me thank you for this question.  I really learned a lot
about mapping resources as I sorted through the various options out
there.

I'm glad we finally got the information you needed.  Let me add one
more valuable link to the mix.

If you head to:


http://www2.census.gov/plmap/pl_trt/


you'll find a directory list of census maps for each state in the US. 
Clicking on any state will bring up another list of counties in that
state, and clicking on a county will bring up a set of maps for that
county very similar to the ones I already linked you to for
Hillsborough and Pinellas.  The first map listed (usually ending in
000.pdf) is the 'index' map that has the most uncluttered view of the
county as a whole.

Enjoy!

paf

I appreciate the researcher’s persistence in getting the answer I need.

http://ftp2.census.gov/geo/maps/general_ref/cousub_outline/cen2k_pgsz/
may have what you want.

To Nelson-ga,

Thank you for the link.  It provides access to maps of counties, plus
the cities and towns within each county.

I'm surprised that these maps are still so "cluttered".  I guess this is
unavoidable because it looks like counties contain an awful lot of towns and
cities and subdivisions. Also, city limits are seldom straight lines,
and some cities are not contiguous (portions of St Petersburg are
inside two neighboring towns!)

Might there be other maps somewhere that:
(1) are in color?
(2) go down one more level (i.e. zoom in on each city or town)?

Again, thank you for your help.
Rambler-ga.

Sorry.  I just knew of that one off the top of my head.

pafalafa-ga, thanks from a commenter.  I did not know about those maps.

rambler-ga,

Thanks so much...this has been fun.

nelson,

Yeah, Census keeps its treasure trove well-hid, but I at least know
that much about them, which prompted an extra level of digging.