We are proud to have contributed to the recent Daniel Boone National Forest magazine, The Boone Trace. This comely tabloid-sized full-color magazine is the U.S. Forest Service’s official visitors’ guide and welcome publication with maps, photographs, and timely information. With over 700,000 acres, 100+ developed recreation sites, and 600+ miles of trail, this national forest provides ample opportunities to refresh, reconnect and challenge yourself in the great outdoors. The Boone’s Trace magazine is free and should be the first document you read before your adventure in the forest.

The opening paragraph reads, “Dense woodlands, towering cliffs and plunging waterfalls are just a few of the natural wonders found within the boundaries of this most unique forest. Extending across mostly rugged terrain, the forest provides breathtaking scenery, clean water, and an abundance of wood and wildlife.”

The national forest is now divided into four ranger districts; Cumberland, London, Redbird, and Stearns Ranger Districts. The Cumberland Ranger Districts has two of the most popular destinations in the forest, Cave Run Lake and the Red River Gorge. This knobby and cliff-rimmed country is home to historic iron furnaces, rare and endangered plant communities, great arches and sandstone formations, and the rugged Cliffty Wilderness Area.

The London Ranger District is defined by the Rockcastle and Laurel Rivers. Great recreation destinations include Bee Rock, Rockcastle Recreation Area, Turkeyfoot, S-Tree, and the Laurel River Lake. While forest ownership less continuous in this district, many trails (official and unofficial) spline the ridges and creeks for hikers, mountain bikers, and motorized vehicles.

The Stearns Ranger District is home to the Beaver Creek Wilderness Area, Natural Arch Scenic Area, and numerous horse camps, shooting ranges and picnic areas. The area outlines the northern portion of the Big South Fork Recreation Area, which competes with the Red River Gorge for the title, “The Land of Many Arches.” The Redbird Ranger District is not contiguous with the other ranger districts, but off-road vehicle and mountain biking enthusiasts will find the Redbird Crest Trail a fine loop trail.

The Sheltowee Trace is forest’s unifying, long-distance trail, which connects the northern tip of forest with Tennessee’s Pickett State Park. This is the forest’s only National Recreation Trail and is the longest trail in Kentucky. Trail users can find more information at http://www.sheltoweetrace.com.

Magazine designed by Gwen Hensley of the forest service.

During the early days of outrageGIS mapping, Boyd finished a one-hour video that explored once-segregated black parks in Kentucky. The historic parks found in the movie are Douglass Park in Lexington, Iroquois & Chickasaw Parks in Louisville, Stuart Nelson and Noble Parks in Paducah, and Cherokee State Resort Park in Aurora.

[Read more…]

Over the past few months we’ve created some maps that are related to outdoor recreation and trails. While not guides for public recreation areas, they represent smaller cartography projects we like to do. The maps use GPS-captured data, aerial photography, and a slight 3D rendering technique to give the maps a unique and intuitive representation of the geography.

The image on the left is a screen-capture of the Town Branch Trail Plan. The trail is a proposed greenway that connects downtown Lexington, Kentucky with distant Masterson Station Park, one of the city’s largest park. The aerial photography is derived from high-resolution, 2ft-pixel imagery, and is accentuated by a subtle 3D relief. Lexington spreads over a large anticline, a geological feature characterized by a broad uplift of land, and causes the situation that most streams flow away from the center of the city. Elevation relief in the downtown area is slight, but increases dramatically as one approaches the Kentucky River to west and south. Future plans for the map are adding more interactive features, such as pop-up info boxes.

The map to the right is part of 3-part map project for Red River Gorge Cabin Rentals, an exclusive resort area in the Red River Gorge. The maps were a 2D, 3D, and Google map showing cabins, trails, and roads. We GPS-captured roads and trails and created a simple shaded relief map for generic directions, and a more artistic 3D aerial photographic map of the resort.

Here is a quote from their website, “Located in the heart of the Daniel Boone National Forest in Kentucky lies a paradise of natural stone arches, caves, rock shelters and towering cliffs all encircling steep, forested slopes overlooking narrow stream valleys.” You can visit thier website here.

Lunch-time excursions to Forest Park. That’s how I spent my free time at the North American Cartographic Information Society conference in St. Louis. While it was exciting to see new maps and presentations about cartographic history and even making maps, I had to visit a prominent swath of green on my St. Louis Map.

Enter Forest Park; an urban park established after the Civil War and used as the site for the 1904 World’s Fair. Today you can freely walk along a sculpted archipelago of scenic lakes & historic monuments, freely visit an art museum and fantastically intimate zoo. I wish my city had a Forest Park.

Some photos: http://www.outragegis.com/pixel/071009_14-ForestParkMO
note: these photos were shot with a camera phone, so at best they’re distinctive.

We’re developing our latest map for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and we had a question. As a hiker and user of maps, do you prefer a detailed GEO graticule (you know…the degrees, minutes, seconds…) or do you prefer the military grid, UTM, which is in meters?

We have both on most of our maps, but which would you use most?

Of course the graticule would be most useful with a GPS unit in default configuration. If you choose a GEO graticule, do your prefer units in decimal minutes (e.g., 36° 45.35′) or decimal degrees (e.g., 84.2546°).