The United States Geological Survey is having a great big spring sale, with lots of maps, charts, and publications—some of them mid-century vintage—discounted to $1. Yes, $1. At that price, you can't afford to not own entirely too many USGS maps. (Via Travis Weller)

  • techdeviant

    The link to the USGS store didn’t work for me, but this one did for whatever its worth:  http://store.usgs.gov/b2c_usgs/usgs/zInvReductionSearchStart.do

  • relawson

    Just ordered various maps and reports about IN. Will be good for a few school reports i’m sure!

  • Andrew Duane

    Nabbed Kissimmee, FL and Anaheim, CA. (Disney nerd)

    • penguinchris

      Disneyland is well-mapped on the Anaheim quadrant, with the Matterhorn shown as a mountain with its elevation given :)

      Because the rest of the Anaheim quadrant is depressing and boring, though, the cool thing to do is to get the older maps. I don’t remember the exact years but there is a 1920′s or earlier one, a 50′s one, a 1964 and a 1972, and possibly a 80′s one. It’s a very dramatic change from the 50′s orange groves when Disneyland was built to the later maps where it turns into suburban sprawl (and the worst kind too).

      (I studied geology in grad school in Fullerton, which neighbors Anaheim, and so had access to a massive map collection)

  • Andrew W

    The link doesn’t work.

    • Richard

      I think it’s a hacker link to get past their paywall:

       500   Internal Server Error
      SAP J2EE Engine/7.00
        ISA Framework: java.lang.NullPointerException
        Details:    
        No details available

  • RevRob

    Search very carefully.
    You can also find maps of the moon, Mars, and Gravity Anomalies in OH and NJ. . . Fantastic!

  • BillStewart2012

    They’re also having an open house in Menlo Park this weekend, overlapping with Maker Faire and the solar eclipse.

  • penguinchris

    This sale has been going on for a while, and I’ve resisted buying anything because I have a huge stash of this kind of stuff already. If you are at a university, check the science library occasionally – they often have a cart of books they’re discarding that you can take for free, and when they update their maps they’ll discard the old ones. I thought it would be a good idea one time as an undergrad to take all of the maps they were discarding (I worked in the library so had good access) – I now have hundreds of USGS topo maps. I also have picked up dozens of discarded geologic maps and other things along the way, in various places.

    One use you might not have thought of – even at $1 instead of free, these make excellent conversational wrapping paper for gifts :)

    Maps of the moon, mars, etc. as RevRob noted are great decorative wall pieces if you’re interested in science and space.

  • pjcamp

    Damn! The only thing left on the shelf is a stupid null pointer exception.