What are USGS Maps? How do they relate to townships?
The US Geological Survey produces the familiar “topo map”. In Alaska, there are two main scales: 1: 250,000 and 1:63,360. The 250 scale is ‘big picture’, more of a regional view. There are 153 maps in this series. Townships are clearly marked on each map and are about 1 ” square. This site uses scanned images of the ‘quad’ maps to link to the township based land records. As you drag the cursor over the USGS map, we keep track of what township you are in. This will help when you don’t know the number for the township and range, but you can locate the property by viewing a USGS map. The 1:63,360 maps are also known as the ‘inch per mile’ maps or ‘ITM’. There are about 3000 maps in this series. These maps are more detailed. It takes between 24 and 32 maps made in this scale to cover the same area mapped by one of the 1:250,000 quad maps. At this point in our progress, we have created no links between the township databases and the scanned images of the 1:63,360 maps. To learn more about U
