Table of Contents

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

Basemap 

Arkansas is one of the earlier states that had its own city halls challenge, therefore much work has already been done. However, there are still several communities that may need to be collected. See our spatial analysis 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.  Our November 2018 newsletter has an article titled Editor Roles and Point Colors that describes this process further.

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Remaining Communities   

If you’ve been following us for a while, you may recall that Arkansas was one of the earlier states to have its own designated challenge. You may also recall that Arkansas was one of the first states for which we provided hints about remaining communities. However, as noted above, there are still several communities that this first challenge didn’t catch so we’re revisiting this state to capture any omissions from the original challenge.   

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. Arkansas’ local government primarily 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. 

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 Arkansas Municipal League contains a directory of local governments in Arkansas with corresponding city websites.  
3. Wikipedia also contains a list of cities and towns in Arkansas. 

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 city/town halls elsewhere? 

Our volunteers are AWESOME and have helped us to compile a dataset of these features throughout the entire U.S., so most of the city/town halls have already been collected. However, as noted above, we plan to revisit some of the earlier states to make sure all eligible features have been collected. See the newsletter article titled Mapping Challenge Updates (January 2022) for a map of which states we plan to revisit.  Note that only city/town halls in Arkansas 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!