This helpful posting comes from Maps-L at http://www.listserv.uga.edu/archives/maps-l.html

“Folks:

“Wonderful news. About 300 historic map images of the Gulf Coast area are
now available through the Geospatial-One-Stop (GOS) portal. The maps are
USGS topographic quads that were scanned, processed and georeferenced by
USGS scientists. They are in UTM NAD 27 and are uncompressed GeoTIFFs.

“Here's what you need to do to access these images:

“Go to http://www.geodata.gov
Search
Under “what”, type in “Gulf Coast Historic Maps”
You will see the site listed. Select the site, and you'll be placed on an
FTP site.
This site is: ftp://mcmcftp.er.usgs.gov/Katrina/508dpi/

“Log in “anonymously”.

“You will see a long listing of topo map names.

“Remember that you can always find out where these maps are located by
picking up a USGS quad index from 1 888 ASK USGS or online on:
http://catalog.maplink.com/usgs/USMap.html and selecting the state you are
interested in.

“What can you do with these images? You could, for starters, compare the
historic maps to new topos and aerials online, for example, on
terraserver-usa.com, and observe the amount of landscape change from human
activity and from storm surges. Has the coastline changed? If so, how
much, and why?

Joseph Kerski

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Joseph J. Kerski, Ph.D.
Geographer: Education/GIS
US Geological Survey
Building 810 – Entrance W-5 – Room 3000
Box 25046 – MS 507
Denver CO 80225-0046 USA
jjkerski@usgs.gov
Voice 303-202-4315
Fax 303-202-4137
http://rockyweb.cr.usgs.gov/public/outreach/
USGS: Science for a Changing World
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