Ever since Alan McLeod (host of A Good Beer Blog) turned us on to NYCO’s map of upstate bloggers, (and yeah, he likes maps too) and its recently inspired CNY ecoBlog’s local ecology news map, we’ve been wanting to do a really cool map round-up – so here goes:

If you don’t have Google Earth yet – you are missing out. Terra Server is great for a pay site that’s slow but provides nice printing capabilities, but Google Earth is just plain cool. The detail is amazing, just zoom in to Lake George and take a look at the sedimentation and you’ll see what we mean. Will this level of satellite photography and mapping eventually let us discover all those illegal camps and illicit dumps as well? We can only hope so – of course if we can see the world from space with a few clicks, can you imagine what big brother is doing?

It’s really something that Google Maps can give us a good idea of who dies first in a nuclear attack, but we’re more interested in the old stuff right? So here is:

• New York State Library’s Annotated Bibliography

• New York State Historical Maps (1556-1895) from SUNY Stony Brook

• Historic Topographic NY Maps (1880s-1950s) from the University of New Hampshire

• Adirondack.com for a good quick Topo of the Adirondack High Peak

• A Collection of New York Maps (1642-2003) from the University of Texas

• NOAA Historic Nautical Charts (Choose New York under Region)

And More Generally:

• The New York Public Library’s American Shores Exhibit

• The Library of Congress’s Map Collections

• Lots of Really Old, Really Interesting, Maps from Digital History

• The USGS Geographic Names Information System

Yeah… maps are neat-o.

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Suggested Reading

The Adirondack Atlas