Thursday, January 31, 2008

Need Maps? Try These Links.


Every County Collector has his/her own way of recording the counties they have visited. I began by using a large county outline map of the entire United States, bought at The Map Store in Knoxville, Tennessee. However, after years of rolling and unrolling, marking, and coloring with felt tip pens, it disintegrated. I got another large map and had it laminated. I still use that map, although it is sometimes a bit unwieldy to carry on trips.

My favorite way of mapping my county travels is by using individual state county outline maps such as that of Missouri, pictured above. I not only color in the county, but also jot in the date of my first visit. Such maps can be found on the internet. One good source is the U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/maps/stco_02.htm. The University of Texas offers the same maps but in a slightly different format: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/county_outline.html.

A very attractive set of county outline maps may be found at this site – although it may take a bit of searching to locate them: http://nationalatlas.gov/printable.html.

My wife and I actually have three sets of state maps in different three ring binders. They are labeled: Stephen's Counties, Karen's Counties, and Our Counties - our counties being those we have visited together.

We also record our travels at a couple of online county sites, the largest being Marty O'Brien's site: http://www.mob-rule.com/counties/. Carey Jensen also has a nice site where you can record your counties online: http://counties.visitedmap.com/.

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