Can I get a bulk order of USGS topographic maps in PDF format for a state or the entire country?
Yes. Bulk delivery is available for maps from the US Topo collection (produced 2009-present) and the Historical Topographic Map Collection (produced 1884-2006). In bulk delivery requests, please specify which of these two product series you want. Only current US Topo maps (not superseded maps) are available for bulk distribution (use topoView to download individual superseded maps).
Bulk delivery options are currently only available for maps in GeoPDF file format.
Options for bulk delivery:
1. Batch download: We recommend this option for state-size areas, which is roughly 1,500 maps or fewer. Use The National Map Downloader to select maps over any rectangular area or for predefined areas such as counties or states. The resulting product list can be saved to a CSV file, and this file used as input to the uGet download manager application to retrieve all the maps.
2. CSV database dump: Advanced users can download a CSV list of all topo products that includes a download URL for each map. The link to the download is at the bottom of our Topographic Maps page. Use the information in this complete file for more sophisticated filtering, version control, and to keep private collections of maps up to date. We do not provide tutorial assistance for those operations.
3. Portable disk drive: If you ship us a portable disk drive with prepaid return shipping, we will load the drive with maps and return it to you. We recommend this option for larger numbers of files, up to the entire map collection. For more details, send a message describing your requirements (including product type and state(s) of interest) to tnminfo@usgs.gov.
Hard drive shipping is intended for one-time or infrequent deliveries. Users who wish to keep a private collection continuously current are encouraged to use Options 3 or 4 to monitor US Topo production and retrieve new maps. We do not have a subscription service for notification of new maps, nor do we coordinate disk-drive deliveries with production milestones; requests for bulk delivery are queued as we receive them and answered as quickly as other work permits.
4. Catalog API: USGS product databases can be monitored through the API of the ScienceBase catalog. This is similar to option 3, but is more elegant and powerful. See the ScienceBase Development Documentation Wiki for details This option is for skilled Web programmers.
Dataset sizes as of June 2020:
US Topo
- Median file size = 30 MB
- 64,732 current maps, 3.1 TB total
- 101,300 non-current (superseded) maps, 2.41 TB total (NOT AVAILABLE FOR BULK DISTRIBUTION)
- About 75 new maps are added or replaced each work day.
Historical Topographic Map Collection (HTMC)
- Median file size = 11 MB
- 186,197 files, 2.15 TB total
- This collection is relatively complete and stable, though we estimate that between 10,000 and 20,000 additional maps will eventually be added.
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