That's right! Our volunteers have done it again! Our volunteers are AWESOME and have helped us collect these features throughout all the US states and territories. Our initial city/town hall collection efforts may be winding down but fear not! We plan to keep and maintain this dataset for display on US Topo maps, so there may be maintenance activities down the road as the data matures.

Table of Contents

• Basemap
• What does each point color mean?
• Remaining Communities
• Tips and Tricks
• Interested in collecting other points?
• Questions? 

Basemap

Alabama is another state that had its own city halls challenge early in the game, therefore much work has already been done. However, there are still several communities for which city/town halls may need to be collected. Read on for tips on how to identify these communities. 

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What does each point color mean?    

These colors are part of our tiered editing process and signal to other editors that a point has passed through the upper tiers and does not need to be edited again.  The newsletter article titled Editor Roles and Point Colors (November 2018) describes this process further.

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Remaining Communities   

If you’ve been following us for a while, you may recall that Alabama was one of the earlier states to participate in a city halls challenge. You may also recall that we provided hints about remaining communities towards the end of this initial challenge. However, there are still several communities for which city/town halls have yet to be collected so we’re revisiting this state to capture any omissions.   

To identify missing communities, we overlaid US Census’s Incorporated Places dataset with all the city / town hall features collected to date. The results help us identify communities that do not yet have a city / town hall point within their corporate boundaries. We then limited the results to communities with a population greater than 500 since larger communities are more likely to have their own designated city hall. The map below highlights communities that may still need to have a city / town hall point collected.  

NOTE that this does not mean every one of these communities is missing a point.  It is possible that some of these communities do not have a building that fits our definition of a city / town hall while others may have already been collected but their city / town hall falls outside their corporate boundary.    

Please help us research these communities and determine if a city / town hall exists!  

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Tips and tricks for this challenge:  

Local Government: Incorporated vs. Unincorporated 

1. Alabama’s local government consists of cities and towns.   
2. See the newsletter article titled Cities vs. Towns vs. Villages (September 2019) for more on the different types of governing bodies. 

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Possible Sources 

1. Remember to find an authoritative source (e.g., the city or village’s website) for each feature before adding it to the web editor. Not sure why we can’t just rely on information in a cumulative list?  See the How to Spot an Authoritative (Re)Source article (November 2017) for why this is important.   
2. The Alabama League of Municipalities contains a directory of member municipalities with corresponding addresses and city websites.  
3. Wikipedia also contains a list of cities and towns in Alabama. 

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Proper Point Placement 

1. Our November 2018 newsletter includes an article on aerial interpretation for city/town hall structures. This article walks readers through how to find the correct building to place a point on when examining aerial photography. 

Interested in collecting something other than city halls? 

Alabama is the final state in our mission to revisit earlier city halls challenge states – congrats! Once this challenge wraps, we plan to shift from city halls to points with no edit history. If you’d like to begin editing these no-edit-history features sooner rather than later, see the newsletter article titled No-Edit-History Points by Feature Type (April 2022) for tips on where they’re located. Note that only city/town halls in Alabama will count towards this challenge. 

Questions 

If you have any questions during the mapping process, reach out to us at nationalmapcorps@usgs.gov and someone will be happy to assist!  Thank you for all that you do, and happy mapping!