7 ms·

National Park Maps

277 points by hownottowrite 10y ago

aw3c2 10y ago
I usually hate pages that try to monetize via related affiliate links but this looks so genuinely useful and transports such a positive, down-to-earth and user-friendly vibe that I just love it. Well done!
- bsilvereagle 10y ago
  What user-friendly alternative do you propose to affiliate links? I'd rather have a link that I choose to click than ads and third party analytics loaded. On my handful of pages donate buttons don't convert. Affiliate links are the best way I've found to cover hosting costs while respecting my visitors bandwidth and privacy.
  - aw3c2 10y ago
    I did not mean it like that. Most pages where I see affiliate links only exist to serve those. This one seems like a genuine website created for good, not to make money.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
  Why? I can understand review-spam kind of blogs where people just write a shitty review filled with affiliate links but there are tonnes of pages that do a good job at creating content and try to monetize a bit via affiliate links. People hate ads, people hate tracking, hardly anyone pays subscriptions fees, and now if you hate even affiliate links, it comes across more as hating the fact that people are trying to make money from the content they have spent hours creating.
  - justin66 10y ago
    I am reminded of the time a poster here on HN threadcrapped [0] simply to post a non-affiliate link to an item mentioned in an article. His stated belief was that the article itself (or its author) was not worthy of an affiliate commission but the item mentioned in the article itself was of legitimate interest, and so he went out of his way to make sure readers could investigate the item mentioned in the article without giving affiliate credit. All I can figure regarding the poster's true motivations in that thread is that there is some small percentage of the population that still gets syphilis, and some much smaller percentage that lets it go untreated, and some small percentage of the people in the tertiary stage of syphilis must post on HN... [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13285587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13285587
  - rdiddly 10y ago
    Kind of correct. Probably it's only because I still remember the old "non-monetized" internet, but I just don't get the line of thought that posting some stuff on the web means everybody owes you a living. Lest we forget, those who want to make money from the internet are the more recent arrivals, and (especially at the time when it happened and I was young & idealistic) I found them to be like the crass uninvited guests who show up late and ruin the party (while thinking they actually turned a lame party awesome). Before they arrived, "the party" was full of useful sites like this, run by people for the simple love of whatever-it-was. The amateur internet, I suppose you'd call it. The reason this is a breath of fresh air is because it simply is what it is (not in the trying-to-assuage-my-disappointment sense, but in the no-deceptive-obfuscation sense) and in that way hearkens back to that era and doesn't bear the stench of today's typical swindles, schemes, and dubious offers. Yet it takes advantage of some of today's design tools/ideas and is a better quality experience than a lot of sites "back in the day." Mind you, I don't begrudge anyone what they're doing, even if it's commercial, but the time you spent creating "content" may be worth something to someone, or maybe not. When you demand compensation, the bar is higher.
    - kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
      >> "that posting some stuff on the web means everybody owes you a living." You don't owe them a living, but specifically acting to rob them of a living that they are trying to earn without getting in your way (affiliate links or non intrusive ads or such) moves from idealistic to dickish. New inventions or changes give rise to new paradigms, and with new paradigms come new ways to earn money or in general exchange goods and services.
      - rdiddly 10y ago
        Nobody said a thing about acting to rob anybody of anything. If you're trying to reopen the ad-blocking debate, I'm not really interested in that. I'm saying and I believe the grandparent is saying, sites with those features are to varying degrees less-good, precisely because of those features. Since I'm under no obligation to funnel myself into that site, I'll tend to ignore it, and I'm more likely to ignore it the less value it actually offers. (And the net value it offers, does decrease because of ads and adtech tactics.) In my case I'm also saying, commerce itself is basically boring; I can find it anywhere. I believe your use of the word "rob" is inappropriate since you can't be robbed of something you don't own. (My attention, the content of my web browser, etc.)
  - aw3c2 10y ago
    I should have said something along those lines rather. Affiliate links are quite nice IF they are just a late addition and not the whole purpose of a site. This site seems genuine!
- npmaps 10y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I've struggled quite a bit with figuring out how to best earn some income to cover my hosting fees (and ideally earn something more for all the work I've put into it). I experimented with Adsense but felt the ads were too intrusive and slowed down my page loading speed, and I didn't want to hurt the user experience. So I took a crack at creating some merchandise and using affiliate links, hoping that they integrate seamlessly and don't feel tacked on. I'm open to your alternative suggestions, however, if you think it feels like overkill (though I'm pretty dead-set against any donation buttons). I appreciate your kind words as well! And thanks to OP for submitting my site.
Dowwie 10y ago
This is a great resource for someone to get started preparing a trip but when you're ready for topo detail, I highly recommend: https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php It offers 8 different collections of topographical maps, some that include trails
chrisan 10y ago
Speaking of maps, is there a good app with offline maps to use with your GPS?
- jjawssd 10y ago
  OSMand
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    There's a whole range of OpenStreetMap based apps and even programs that will process OpenStreetMap data into the custom formats used by various dedicated GPS units.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I don't know if the NPS pdfs are georeferenced, but Avenza Maps is a nice app for working with pdf maps on phones and tablets. (It's relatively low hanging fruit to georeference the maps, but they may not update them frequently and so wouldn't have responded to the popularity of smart phones yet)
  - subpixel 10y ago
    Avenzamaps has a marketplace, so you can find georeferenced maps from all sorts of providers. For US hiking and trail running they are without peer. In Europe companies like outdooractive.com combine maps with data points like hotels and vendors.
- codingdave 10y ago
  I know this isn't directly an answer, but I live in Utah and find that mapping on a device is not reliable in some of the parks, and definitely not out in the wilderness. The cell network just isn't 100%, and unless your device has a satellite-based GPS, your mapping won't work anyway. I do agree that better apps are needed. I'm an avid explorer of Utah's western desert, and even with both paper maps and electronic, and prepping by looking at what Google maps thinks is correct and reviewing satellite imagery before I go, the patchwork of old abandoned dirt roads out there is still a maze much of the time. The point being... when going out into the wilderness, even with a good app, please don't rely on it 100%. Plan well and be safe.
bmc7505 10y ago
Nice! As someone who loves to hike, you should add the National Forest Maps too: https://www.fs.fed.us/visit/maps/ https://www.fs.fed.us/visit/maps/
- npmaps 10y ago
  Hi, I'm not the OP but I am the creator of NPMaps (many thanks to hownottowrite for submitting this). I would indeed like to get around to Forest Service maps after I finish with the national park units. However, they're lower on my to-do list because I've found Forest Service maps to be much more time-consuming to aggregate. Fewer people are searching for them as well. So, it will happen eventually! I just can't promise it'll happen until I finish the national parks -- unfortunately, it'll be a while since I work a full-time job and this is just a side project when I have free time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rdiddly 10y ago
    Yes, among other things there are a lot more NFs than NPs! Keep up the good work regardless - this is a public service you're doing. Hey maybe we should all crowdfund you to work full-time on the site for a year!
  - gmichnikov 10y ago
    I bet if you throw together a quick sign-up form and post it here soon you could get dozens of volunteers who would be willing to find the maps for a couple of places that you assign them and email them to you.
BarkMore 10y ago
The site http://caltopo.com/ http://caltopo.com/ is another good resource for maps. The site includes a number of maps including USGS, USFS and marine charts. There are several useful overlays for hikers including trails and fire history.
- tammer 10y ago
  I'm a huge fan of a little app called Maplets.[1] Has saved me on a number of occasions, and highlights how limited the big name mapping tools really still are for all kinds of navigation information. [1]: http://www.mobilemaplets.com/ http://www.mobilemaplets.com/
  - rasengan0 10y ago
    Mee too, off to europe and maplets is my goto offline. https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ and GPS on https://www.google.com/maps https://www.google.com/maps are supplements. What always surprises me is GPS working sans wifi and cellular
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Thank you for mentioning this app. Purchased!
- mc32 10y ago
  Fro topo I use these maps too http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1 http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1
- rkcf 10y ago
  I love caltopo. I use it for all of my backcountry adventures. It also has historical maps in its database which make for a good time finding ghost towns and possible ruins.
lebek 10y ago
If you're into the aesthetic of these maps, http://www.reliefshading.com/ http://www.reliefshading.com/ is a very nice resource explaining the process.
derwiki 10y ago
Similarly, I took a weekend last summer and built www.mapofnationalparks.com to show on one map where all the parks were, and link to the official site / hiking, etc (with pretty pictures, of course).
trhaynes 10y ago
Love the site! Great work. I wish pages like http://npmaps.com/colorado/ http://npmaps.com/colorado/ had big thumbnails/previews — would make picking a map easier than solely with text descriptions (which are well-written btw).
- npmaps 10y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! Admittedly, I'm pretty new when it comes to web design and have been sort of making it up as I go along. I ended up with the current layout because it was easy enough to code that I could figure out how to do it. I'm sure I could find some tools to allow hover image previews though - I'll add that to my (very long!) to-do list.
voltagex_ 10y ago
What's the licencing situation on the higher res PDF maps? It might be cool to chop them up into tiles and use something like Leaflet [1] to display it in browser. 1: http://leafletjs.com/ http://leafletjs.com/
theparanoid 10y ago
The south-west (including California) has a crazy amount of NPs http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/national-park-map.jpg http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/national-park-map.jpg
msimpson 10y ago
As the website states: > NPMaps.com is an independent website and is not affiliated with the National Park Service. > This is just a one-man project that gets worked on whenever said guy actually has some free time. It's hard work! This is particularly important as NPS actually has an official Mapbox based initiative underway, here: https://www.nps.gov/npmap/ https://www.nps.gov/npmap/ https://github.com/nationalparkservice https://github.com/nationalparkservice In an attempt to unite their various datasets from around the country into one large system.
joewils 9y ago
Thank you for all the effort you've put into this project. Love the clean design and how you've used affiliate links and merchandising to monetize the site. A+ work.

277 points by hownottowrite 10y ago

aw3c2 10y ago

I usually hate pages that try to monetize via related affiliate links but this looks so genuinely useful and transports such a positive, down-to-earth and user-friendly vibe that I just love it. Well done!

bsilvereagle 10y ago
What user-friendly alternative do you propose to affiliate links? I'd rather have a link that I choose to click than ads and third party analytics loaded. On my handful of pages donate buttons don't convert. Affiliate links are the best way I've found to cover hosting costs while respecting my visitors bandwidth and privacy.
- aw3c2 10y ago
  I did not mean it like that. Most pages where I see affiliate links only exist to serve those. This one seems like a genuine website created for good, not to make money.
kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
Why? I can understand review-spam kind of blogs where people just write a shitty review filled with affiliate links but there are tonnes of pages that do a good job at creating content and try to monetize a bit via affiliate links. People hate ads, people hate tracking, hardly anyone pays subscriptions fees, and now if you hate even affiliate links, it comes across more as hating the fact that people are trying to make money from the content they have spent hours creating.
- justin66 10y ago
  I am reminded of the time a poster here on HN threadcrapped [0] simply to post a non-affiliate link to an item mentioned in an article. His stated belief was that the article itself (or its author) was not worthy of an affiliate commission but the item mentioned in the article itself was of legitimate interest, and so he went out of his way to make sure readers could investigate the item mentioned in the article without giving affiliate credit. All I can figure regarding the poster's true motivations in that thread is that there is some small percentage of the population that still gets syphilis, and some much smaller percentage that lets it go untreated, and some small percentage of the people in the tertiary stage of syphilis must post on HN... [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13285587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13285587
- rdiddly 10y ago
  Kind of correct. Probably it's only because I still remember the old "non-monetized" internet, but I just don't get the line of thought that posting some stuff on the web means everybody owes you a living. Lest we forget, those who want to make money from the internet are the more recent arrivals, and (especially at the time when it happened and I was young & idealistic) I found them to be like the crass uninvited guests who show up late and ruin the party (while thinking they actually turned a lame party awesome). Before they arrived, "the party" was full of useful sites like this, run by people for the simple love of whatever-it-was. The amateur internet, I suppose you'd call it. The reason this is a breath of fresh air is because it simply is what it is (not in the trying-to-assuage-my-disappointment sense, but in the no-deceptive-obfuscation sense) and in that way hearkens back to that era and doesn't bear the stench of today's typical swindles, schemes, and dubious offers. Yet it takes advantage of some of today's design tools/ideas and is a better quality experience than a lot of sites "back in the day." Mind you, I don't begrudge anyone what they're doing, even if it's commercial, but the time you spent creating "content" may be worth something to someone, or maybe not. When you demand compensation, the bar is higher.
  - kinkrtyavimoodh 10y ago
    >> "that posting some stuff on the web means everybody owes you a living." You don't owe them a living, but specifically acting to rob them of a living that they are trying to earn without getting in your way (affiliate links or non intrusive ads or such) moves from idealistic to dickish. New inventions or changes give rise to new paradigms, and with new paradigms come new ways to earn money or in general exchange goods and services.
    - rdiddly 10y ago
      Nobody said a thing about acting to rob anybody of anything. If you're trying to reopen the ad-blocking debate, I'm not really interested in that. I'm saying and I believe the grandparent is saying, sites with those features are to varying degrees less-good, precisely because of those features. Since I'm under no obligation to funnel myself into that site, I'll tend to ignore it, and I'm more likely to ignore it the less value it actually offers. (And the net value it offers, does decrease because of ads and adtech tactics.) In my case I'm also saying, commerce itself is basically boring; I can find it anywhere. I believe your use of the word "rob" is inappropriate since you can't be robbed of something you don't own. (My attention, the content of my web browser, etc.)
- aw3c2 10y ago
  I should have said something along those lines rather. Affiliate links are quite nice IF they are just a late addition and not the whole purpose of a site. This site seems genuine!
npmaps 10y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I've struggled quite a bit with figuring out how to best earn some income to cover my hosting fees (and ideally earn something more for all the work I've put into it). I experimented with Adsense but felt the ads were too intrusive and slowed down my page loading speed, and I didn't want to hurt the user experience. So I took a crack at creating some merchandise and using affiliate links, hoping that they integrate seamlessly and don't feel tacked on. I'm open to your alternative suggestions, however, if you think it feels like overkill (though I'm pretty dead-set against any donation buttons). I appreciate your kind words as well! And thanks to OP for submitting my site.

Dowwie 10y ago

This is a great resource for someone to get started preparing a trip but when you're ready for topo detail, I highly recommend: https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php It offers 8 different collections of topographical maps, some that include trails

chrisan 10y ago

Speaking of maps, is there a good app with offline maps to use with your GPS?

jjawssd 10y ago
OSMand
- maxerickson 10y ago
  There's a whole range of OpenStreetMap based apps and even programs that will process OpenStreetMap data into the custom formats used by various dedicated GPS units.
maxerickson 10y ago
I don't know if the NPS pdfs are georeferenced, but Avenza Maps is a nice app for working with pdf maps on phones and tablets. (It's relatively low hanging fruit to georeference the maps, but they may not update them frequently and so wouldn't have responded to the popularity of smart phones yet)
- subpixel 10y ago
  Avenzamaps has a marketplace, so you can find georeferenced maps from all sorts of providers. For US hiking and trail running they are without peer. In Europe companies like outdooractive.com combine maps with data points like hotels and vendors.
codingdave 10y ago
I know this isn't directly an answer, but I live in Utah and find that mapping on a device is not reliable in some of the parks, and definitely not out in the wilderness. The cell network just isn't 100%, and unless your device has a satellite-based GPS, your mapping won't work anyway. I do agree that better apps are needed. I'm an avid explorer of Utah's western desert, and even with both paper maps and electronic, and prepping by looking at what Google maps thinks is correct and reviewing satellite imagery before I go, the patchwork of old abandoned dirt roads out there is still a maze much of the time. The point being... when going out into the wilderness, even with a good app, please don't rely on it 100%. Plan well and be safe.

bmc7505 10y ago

Nice! As someone who loves to hike, you should add the National Forest Maps too: https://www.fs.fed.us/visit/maps/ https://www.fs.fed.us/visit/maps/

npmaps 10y ago
Hi, I'm not the OP but I am the creator of NPMaps (many thanks to hownottowrite for submitting this). I would indeed like to get around to Forest Service maps after I finish with the national park units. However, they're lower on my to-do list because I've found Forest Service maps to be much more time-consuming to aggregate. Fewer people are searching for them as well. So, it will happen eventually! I just can't promise it'll happen until I finish the national parks -- unfortunately, it'll be a while since I work a full-time job and this is just a side project when I have free time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rdiddly 10y ago
  Yes, among other things there are a lot more NFs than NPs! Keep up the good work regardless - this is a public service you're doing. Hey maybe we should all crowdfund you to work full-time on the site for a year!
- gmichnikov 10y ago
  I bet if you throw together a quick sign-up form and post it here soon you could get dozens of volunteers who would be willing to find the maps for a couple of places that you assign them and email them to you.

BarkMore 10y ago

The site http://caltopo.com/ http://caltopo.com/ is another good resource for maps. The site includes a number of maps including USGS, USFS and marine charts. There are several useful overlays for hikers including trails and fire history.

tammer 10y ago
I'm a huge fan of a little app called Maplets.[1] Has saved me on a number of occasions, and highlights how limited the big name mapping tools really still are for all kinds of navigation information. [1]: http://www.mobilemaplets.com/ http://www.mobilemaplets.com/
- rasengan0 10y ago
  Mee too, off to europe and maplets is my goto offline. https://www.openstreetmap.org/ https://www.openstreetmap.org/ and GPS on https://www.google.com/maps https://www.google.com/maps are supplements. What always surprises me is GPS working sans wifi and cellular
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Thank you for mentioning this app. Purchased!
mc32 10y ago
Fro topo I use these maps too http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1 http://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?useExisting=1
rkcf 10y ago
I love caltopo. I use it for all of my backcountry adventures. It also has historical maps in its database which make for a good time finding ghost towns and possible ruins.

lebek 10y ago

If you're into the aesthetic of these maps, http://www.reliefshading.com/ http://www.reliefshading.com/ is a very nice resource explaining the process.

derwiki 10y ago

Similarly, I took a weekend last summer and built www.mapofnationalparks.com to show on one map where all the parks were, and link to the official site / hiking, etc (with pretty pictures, of course).

trhaynes 10y ago

Love the site! Great work. I wish pages like http://npmaps.com/colorado/ http://npmaps.com/colorado/ had big thumbnails/previews — would make picking a map easier than solely with text descriptions (which are well-written btw).

npmaps 10y ago
Thanks for the feedback! Admittedly, I'm pretty new when it comes to web design and have been sort of making it up as I go along. I ended up with the current layout because it was easy enough to code that I could figure out how to do it. I'm sure I could find some tools to allow hover image previews though - I'll add that to my (very long!) to-do list.

voltagex_ 10y ago

What's the licencing situation on the higher res PDF maps? It might be cool to chop them up into tiles and use something like Leaflet [1] to display it in browser. 1: http://leafletjs.com/ http://leafletjs.com/

theparanoid 10y ago

The south-west (including California) has a crazy amount of NPs http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/national-park-map.jpg http://npmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/national-park-map.jpg

msimpson 10y ago

As the website states: > NPMaps.com is an independent website and is not affiliated with the National Park Service. > This is just a one-man project that gets worked on whenever said guy actually has some free time. It's hard work! This is particularly important as NPS actually has an official Mapbox based initiative underway, here: https://www.nps.gov/npmap/ https://www.nps.gov/npmap/ https://github.com/nationalparkservice https://github.com/nationalparkservice In an attempt to unite their various datasets from around the country into one large system.

joewils 9y ago

Thank you for all the effort you've put into this project. Love the clean design and how you've used affiliate links and merchandising to monetize the site. A+ work.