New York City illuminated map

24x34” illuminated print. Maps by the U.S. Geological Survey. From 1945 to 1992 the United States Geological Survey published tens of thousands of 1:24,000 scale topographic maps. The maps are a feat, the product of decades of work by hundreds of skilled cartographers, surveyors, geodesists, photogrammetrists and drafters.These maps, 9 of which are tiled here, divide the country into 70-square-mile rectangles. If the U.S. Geological Survey cared to know the location of a natural feature or human-made object, it was logged: buildings of temporal or spiritual authority, roads, petrochemical and electrical infrastructure, survey benchmarks, water treatment plants, high and low points, rivers, streamgages, bridges, railroads, cliffs, reefs, soundings, piers, prisons, lakes, swamps. It makes a bad tourist map, marking all subway lines with the unhelpful “TRANSIT” and doesn't say which bridges you can walk on. It does tell you the shapes of the forts; these were traced from aerial photos, so