What are shapefiles?
Shapefiles are digital representations of geographic features, such as roads and boundaries, that are used to create maps. A shapefile stores non-topological geometry and attribute information for the spatial features in a data set. The Census Bureau provides county-based shapefile layers in Environmental Systems Research Institute* (ESRI) shapefile format. * The use of brand names does not represent an endorsement of a company or its products by the U.S. government. Due to the wide use of ESRI products by our partners in the GIS community, and ubiquitous use of the shapefile format as a medium for GIS data exchange, the Census Bureau provides data in shapefile format.
