CONCORD, N.H. – Great news for New Hampshire hikers, hunters and outdoor enthusiasts: the N.H. Fish and Game Department has created topographic maps of the entire state, available for free at http://www.wildnh.com/maps. The topo maps, in PDF format and sized to print on an 8.5″x11″ sheet of paper, include the latest available geographic information for the state at a scale of 1:31,680 (1 inch per half-mile). The maps include roads, municipal boundaries, water bodies, conservation properties, state and national forests and parks and more.
To find a map, go to http://www.wildnh.com/maps, click on Topo Maps, and click on a town name. A small map of the town will come up, with red lines and labels to show each available PDF topo map. Below the small map is a list of map names keyed to the labels shown. Click on the name of the map you want to download.
Each PDF map is less than 500 KB in size for fast downloading, and may be opened with Adobe Reader version 8 or newer. Each topo map represents a quarter of a U.S. Geological Survey “quad” map; 851 of these “quarter-quads” cover the 259 towns and unincorporated places of New Hampshire, and each is available as a topo (showing land contours) or with a photographic background.
The background scanned images of U.S. Geological Survey paper topographic maps are from the National Geographic Society provided through ArcGIS Online, a map service with land cover imagery for the world and detailed topographic maps for the United States at multiple scales. The photography (2009) is from the National Agriculture Imagery Program. The other data layers are from NH GRANIT, the statewide geographic information system clearinghouse.