Hello June! Can you believe we’re nearing the halfway point of 2017? Whether time seems to be going quickly or slowly we wanted to make sure you aren’t missing out on an excellent free resource for your family history research: The National Map.

The National Map is a website of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), and provides excellent downloadable PDF county maps for every state in the United States. These are my go-to for current county maps. I’ve saved PDF copies to use for various projects and printed all of them to keep in a binder for a quick reference because the question of “where is that?” comes up a lot when working with clients in various states.

Each state has four types of maps: general reference, county, county with select towns, and rivers & lakes. I also like the Territorial Acquisitions Map and the Federal Lands & Indian Reservations maps for each state.

Quick Links: State Reference Maps, Territorial Acquisitions, Federal Lands

I’ve found a lot of uses for these maps, and hope these will be a great reference for your research as well!

Have you ever used county maps in an interesting way in your research? We’d love to hear about it in the comments.