From time to time I'll mention that the "Forest Service topo shows" this or "indicates" that, but this map series doesn't seem to be quite as well known as the USGS quadrangles (AKA "quads"). I have even encountered Forest Service employees who were not aware of it, or had it but were not aware that it is a public map too. I do not mean the sometimes topographic paper maps, usually of a specific wilderness area, the FS may have for sale. This is a free digital map series that covers the entirety of Forest Service land with topographic detail. It's also getting to be 10 years old (some quads are older, some newer) and in need of an update.
FSTopo Legacy
The old FSTopo is now getting called "FSTopo Legacy". It still has some value in it, so I'll give a bit more detail.
This is probably best known as a layer in other offerings. Caltopo has a Forest Service layer, which has options of "2013 (white)" or "2016 (white)" or "2016 (green)". The green one is the one that looks most like the downloadable versions, except they also show the inholdings. There's probably other versions available through various other services. GAIA has a Forest Service layer that shows the FSTopo. I don't actually use it, so have no idea about the details.
A piece of the Smoky Creek quad covering Shasta-Trinity National Forest showing contour lines, creeks and rivers, trails, open and closed roads, and an inholding.
I just get it from the source, the Forest Service. There actually is some level of updating and the image from the Smoky Creek quad above from a map generated in 2023 (the current downloadable) is slightly different from my set generated in 2018. I wrote about how to get these maps when I wrote about software I use to have maps for free on Android. My older maps show closed roads by placing a bar across the road where it is closed and leaving the rest of the representation just like any other road (like the representation on the Caltopo version) whereas this one shows a grey dotted line making the closure much more obvious. Also, the road down to Murphys Place was marked closed a little further down the hill.
The Forest Service makes them available for download here in PDF and TIFF format. Both are georeferenced for use in mapping applications. The TIFFs are faster to use and good for tiling, but require about 8 times the space. I have the whole set, so I go for the space saving vector graphics of the PDF. These have borders of a traditional print map so the series may be had in print from any wide format printer. Poking at the map on the above link is fine if you are only looking for a couple, but the link below it to all quads in 1 degree blocks is much more useful for, say, pointing wget at.
OruxMaps remains the best application I know for viewing the PDFs, capable of selecting the ones that are in the vicinity of the GPS signal for view. I'm always glad to hear about another, so long as it's not Aveza.
FSTopo
The new FSTopo is much like the old one, but also come in larger scale series that contain less detail. They can be downloaded from a fancy ArcGIS website here. There's even three versions of a national map! The only series really useful for hiking is, of course, the 1:24k (1:25k in Alaska) ones specifically called "FSTopo" in the buttons. (There's also another location to download the FSTopo Legacy maps here.)
These are generated automatically from the "authoritative data" of a very long list of government sources. And how does that look?
Approximately the same area of the Smoky Creek quad in the new FSTopo. It shows a corrected route for one trail, but the older route of it and other trails are also marked by an "improved dirt road" line.
This particular section of the map may not be fair, but since I was writing about hiking the South Fork National Recreation Trail at the time I was initially poking around these maps, it's the one I downloaded and had a look at and it left a bit of an impression. Fortunately, egregious mistakes like this can be tracked down to the source (I suspect the TIGER data, which is a US Census product compiled from many other databases) and it can be fixed. Poking around now shows this particular one already is.
And there's the power of the automatic generation. The smaller the hindrance to generation, the more likely updates will happen. It does tend to look a little less pretty.
I also found out the PDFs are no longer georeferenced. Head on down to the next section to see why this isn't such a horrible thing after all. It did get me upset initially and, really, how hard is it to georeference a standard rectangle?
Keeping in mind that these are really only useful as the printable objects PDF (the larger maps are also in JPG) is meant to represent, here is a quick overview of what is offered in this format:
National maps, as stated before. These show the rough locations of forests and grasslands. One highlights Wild and Scenic Rivers.
The Wild and Scenic Rivers seem to cluster around here.
Regional maps. The forests are grouped into several regions and these focus on them. They are available showing the forests or the ranger districts. These have hillshading for relief.
Forest maps. Each forest gets an overview map showing ranger districts and offices, campgrounds and picnic areas, and a few peaks. Only major roads are shown, but there are also some major trails. These have hillshading for relief.
A piece of the Black Hills National Forest map showing quite a few trailheads.
Half-inch per mile (1:126,720) maps. These offer quite a lot more detail and are no longer available in JPG. These have more roads and a lot of trails, but low standard and closed roads, even if commonly hiked, aren't here. There is hillshading.
30'x60' (1:100k) maps. At least some low standard roads are included, but still no closed. Still using hillshading.
A piece of the Truckie 1:100k map showing Donner Pass.
Ranger district maps using one inch per mile (1:63,360) scale like 15' maps. Still no closed roads displayed even though these are generally legal to hike or bike or horseback ride. Well, I found some on the Mount Pinos RD (Los Padres), but some of them aren't connected to anything making it look like a mistake. Finally getting contour lines!
FSTopo, the traditional 7.5'x7.5' smallest scale. Closed roads are shown, and not just by mistake.
FSBasemap
After being upset my precious PDFs weren't georeferenced, I admitted that PDF is not really an ideal tool for digital maps. The PDFs get especially annoying near the edges, which come up frequently. If they, say, provided the maps in a Mapsforge format that is actually made for this, that would be an improvement.
Well, it turns out, they do. It is not Mapsforge, but that's not the only game in town. The Forest Service Basemap (FSBasemap) series offers maps as a Vector Tile Package (vTPK) downloadable here. That allows download by National Forest or, if you've got 55GB free, every forest can be downloaded in a single click. (The whole set of PDFs is only 20.5GB, but it is difficult to deal with in many ways this is not.) They can be styled and allow for different amounts of data to show at different zoom levels. You've got all of the maps above in a single package. Well, okay, not the Wild and Scenic Rivers map. Actually, it never quite looks like any of the larger area maps.
Zoomed in (and rotated and edges trimmed, using the S1 Mobile App below) Black Hills National Forest just enough to see some trailheads and picnic areas, but many seen in the same area above are not yet showing. Zooming out a little removes both trailheads and trails.
Although now I'm left with another dilemma. Although OruxMaps and c:geo support the Mapsforge .map format, they don't support this vTPK thing. Pretty sure. OruxMaps does .mbtiles. There are conversion scripts, so there's an option. Unless it becomes raster. I don't want raster.
S1 Mobile App
This rather generic sounding app is the suggested program to use with the FSBasemap. It is "a custom mapping and field data collection application built for Android mobile devices by the Oregon/Washington Mobile GIS team, sponsored by Bureau of Land Management, Oregon/Washington State Office." So that sounds alright. No data is sent to anyone. I have an Android and a little space for now. I tried it.
It is a quick download and install and it starts with an overview map of Federal and State lands for your personal offline use. I've been wanting one of those! I'm already winning. It can be deleted if you don't want it, but it serves well to orient the user. It is automatically saved to a card rather than internal memory if that is present.
Start the program and get this.
But I'm getting ahead of myself because first one must open the app. Press the "Public Maps" button and get on with it without any login. You'll get that default basemap, which can be viewed in 3 different themes: BLM, USFS, or Classic. It's got all the lands in the typical colors, looking a lot like the "public lands" overlay on Caltopo but with added National Forest outlines. Yellow is BLM, orange is BIA (which is not public land), blue are state lands, purple for National Parks. Hopefully you are already familiar because there's no legend.
A pair of maps, the first showing federal and state lands of coastal northern California in the Forest Service theme. The (darker?) green seen around Humboldt Bay is the National Wildlife Refuge, but rather hard to distinguish from Forest Service.
From here, you actually have an easier way to download the FSBasemap products. Tap the gear (second from the right along the bottom) and choose "Download Maps". This gives a map with pins in it showing the central location of available maps. Green pins show National Forests and orange pins show Bureau of Land Management zones. This second is only available for Oregon and Washington area for now. If you poke around the flats of Colorado east of Colorado Springs, you might even find the pin for the every National Forest collection.
Tap the gear and then "Options" to set a few things like the theme. Tap the layers (middle) and then Basemaps to turn visibility on and off for your downloaded maps. Hit the plus to track yourself or generate waypoints or draw on the map, all of which will stay right on the device rather than the usual sharing with some company. But that's getting past what I want to write about.
Hey, look, it's a bit of the Pacific Crest Trail crossing the Marble Mountain Wilderness.
It seems extremely responsive to roaming around the map. It would be nice to increase font size or scale the general size of elements. How can I make my own theme? Maybe the contours should pop up just a smidge earlier while zooming in. One ought to be able to configure the maps directory so that all apps compatible with the format can use a single set. But very good start. (At version 5.4, it's probably a little past the start.) I got ideas! Oh, there's a button for that at the right.
ArcGIS Field Maps
As zippy and nice as first impressions of S1 Mobile App are, these are a standard (though proprietary) base map format for use in ArcGIS software packages. While ArcGIS Field Maps does not have an easy interface to grab these for yourself, it does come in an iOS version as well as Android. It similarly asks for a sign in, but you can simply "skip sign in". I have had it bounce back to the sign in screen at unusual times.
To get the FSBasemap into this program, you will need to use a browser to download the file into the appropriate location. On Android, that is "(either internal memory or SD card)/Android/data/com.esri.fieldmaps/files/basemaps". Android 11+ will do everything in its power to prevent you having direct access to this app specific directory to the point of just not listing the "data" folder needed to get there in their Files app and not allowing good file explorer apps like Total Commander access it if they want to remain available in Google Play. (Download from F-Droid for a less crippled version.) It is possible to do from a computer connection. For Apple, it says "place it in the Field Maps folder" with no information about location for this. The folder is not configurable, so there is no way to share a single file to other programs.
ArcGIS Field Maps (first) showing a bit of the Pacific Crest Trail through Marble Mountain Wilderness with a simplified PCT trail overlay. The contours are hard to see. Looks like the trail route might need an update. Compared to the same area of the map using S1 Mobile and USFS style.
If you are in a place covered by the base map, it becomes available in the "basemap" list. One can also overlay map packages available through the app. (Like that yellow Pacific Crest Trail line above or a map series showing the Old Spanish National Historic Trail, which is how I found the app.) Some of these can make the app less responsive, but it seems fine with the base maps. The contours only show up when zoomed in very close.
Comparing a bit of US-199 and nearby roads in ArcGIS Field Maps (left) and S1 Mobile with USFS style (right).
So there it is. Even more ways to have maps on your phone or whatever handheld, offline. Because if you don't have it on your device when you leave the house, you can't trust it to be there while hiking. Happy map gazing!
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