TopoQuest is a free

web mapping Web mapping or an online mapping is the process of using maps, usually created through geographic information systems (GIS), on the Internet, more specifically in the World Wide Web (WWW). A web map or an online map is both served and consumed, ...

service built on

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...

software that provides internet-based

topographic maps In modern mapping, a topographic map or topographic sheet is a type of map characterized by large- scale detail and quantitative representation of relief features, usually using contour lines (connecting points of equal elevation), but histori ...

for most of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

. The site is one of three internet services used by

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

for providing topographic maps. It arose to prominence in May 2008 after TopoZone through its new trails.com owners required payment for access to its maps. TopoQuest map links are the same as Topozone's except for the difference in the domain. It is operated by Ryan Niemi in

Klamath Falls, Oregon Klamath Falls ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Klamath County, Oregon, United States. The city was originally called ''Linkville'' when George Nurse founded the town in 1867. It was named after the Link River, on whose falls the city w ...

History

Niemi first experimented with a mapping program in July 2001 as a

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...

, PHP and

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database ...

alternative to

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

TerraServer-USA Microsoft Research Maps (MSR Maps) was a free online repository of public domain aerial imagery and topographic maps provided by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The site was a collaboration between Microsoft Research (MSR), Bing Maps, ...

topographic mapviewer. About Topoquest - topoquest.com
/ref> The domain was registered at Go Daddy to Sunset Dynamics on August 10, 2004.whois lookup record
/ref> However Niemi did not aggressively develop the website because of the success of Topozone. After Topozone started the for pay business model on April 8, 2008, Niemi made updates to get the website to match the Topozone URL methodology for viewing 1:24K

USGS The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

Digital raster graphic A digital raster graphic (DRG) is a digital image resulting from scanning a paper USGS topographic map for use on a computer. DRGs created by USGS are typically scanned at 250 dpi and saved as a TIFF. The raster image usually includes the ori ...

maps available from the

Libre Map Project The Libre Map Project is an online collection of all digital USGS 1:24K scale topographic maps (as well as various other GIS data) covering the United States, available as a free download. The Libre Map Project was started by Jared Benedict and aro ...

and

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It provides free public access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, software applications/games, music, ...

and was operating by May 2008. Code was adapted from the

MapServer MapServer is an open-source development environment for building spatially enabled internet applications, built in the C language, and is widely known as one of the fastest Web mapping engines available. It can run as a CGI program or via MapSc ...

project at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. The viewer was made seamless by incorporating

GDAL The Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) is a computer software library for reading and writing raster and vector geospatial data formats (e.g. shapefile), and is released under the permissive X/MIT style free software license by the ...

. In addition to matching the Topozone URL's, the website offers free download of

GeoTIFF GeoTIFF is a public domain metadata standard which allows georeferencing information to be embedded within a TIFF file. The potential additional information includes map projection, coordinate systems, ellipsoids, datums, and everything else necessa ...

s, which Topozone had only offered for a premium. TopoQuest started adding Canadian 1:50K scale topographic maps in July 2008, and USGS 1:100K and 1:250K scale topographic maps in March 2009.

References

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External links

topoquest.com
Topography techniques Web Map Services Map companies of the United States Maps of Canada Maps of the United States Companies based in Oregon Klamath Falls, Oregon 2008 establishments in Oregon