There are a variety of web sites from which United States Geological Survey (USGS) topographic maps can be downloaded. The following guidance is provided for one of these sites.

The USGS Store site allows users to download free, good quality topographic maps from their site as PDF files. The site contains a link (see link in lower left corner of page) to the TerraGo Web site from which you can download a free GeoPDF Toolbar. The Toolbar works with either Adobe Reader or Adobe Acrobat, to provide more ways to interact with USGS topographic maps, such as collecting Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinates. If you are using the free Adobe Reader, we recommend using the latest version to take full advantage of the GeoPDF Toolbar. If you have a licensed version of Adobe Acrobat, you will find even more ways to interact with the USGS topographic maps.

To download the latest version of the free Adobe Reader, click here
To go directly to the USGS Store Map Locator and Downloader, click here

Collecting UTM Coordinates For Your Historic Property

Tools within the GeoPDF toolbar allow the user to change the projection to a variety of parameters (including UTM), collect distance and area data, and, if using Adobe Acrobat, crop and save as nice quality TIFF files. The TerraGo site has video tutorials on how to use the GeoPDF toolbar (see Tutorials under Product Information on the initial download page).

For instructions on downloading and setting the GeoPDF toolbar to collect UTM coordinates, click here.

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