Alabama; Alaska; Arizona; Arkansas; California; Colorado; Connecticut; Delaware; District of Columbia; Florida; Georgia; Hawaii; Idaho; Illinois; Indiana; Iowa; Kansas; Kentucky; Louisiana; Maine; Maryland; Massachusetts; Michigan; Minnesota; Mississippi; Missouri; Montana; Nebraska; Nevada; New Hampshire; New Jersey; New Mexico; New York; North Carolina; North Dakota; Ohio; Oklahoma; Oregon; Pennsylvania; Rhode Island; South Carolina; South Dakota; Tennessee; Texas; Utah; Vermont; Virginia; Washington; West Virginia; Wisconsin; Wyoming

Help & Description of the GNIS Data

Available from this portion of the Peabody Museum web are 1,233,933 records corresponding to the labeled features that can be found on the 1:24,000 scale topographic maps of the US Geological Survey. A synopsis of the GNIS is as follows (excerpted from the USGS/GNIS FactSheet, June 1991):

"The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a data system developed by the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) in cooperation with the U. S. Board on Geographic Names. The National Geographic Names Data Base is the largest of the GNIS databases, containing records on almost two million geographic feature names in the United States: from populated places, schools, reservoirs, and parks, to streams, valleys, springs, and ridges."

The records retrieved from the Peabody GNIS database service are all "one-liners" of information, containing the following fields: feature name, feature type, county, coordinates, mapname

1. Feature Name

This is the name of the labeled feature on the topographic maps. The Names are capitalized. An asterisk (*) can be used as a wildcard, but only in conjunction with a specific feature type.

2. Feature Type

The feature types represent a classification scheme for sorting labeled features into groups. Note that "ppl" is the feature type for populated places i.e., towns and cities. The feature types available include:

airport arch area arroyo bar basin bay beach bench bend bridge building canal cape cemetery channel church cliff crater crossing dam falls flat forest gap geyser glacier gut harbor hospital island isthmus lake lava levee locale mine oilfield other park pillar plain ppl range rapids reserve reservoir ridge school sea slope spring stream summit swamp tower trail tunnel valley well woods

The county in which the labeled feature occurs.

4. Coordinates

The latitude and longitude for the labeled feature, in the format dddmmssy, where d is degrees, m is minutes, s is seconds, and y is compass direction. The coordinate data are from the LATLONG field in the GNIS database. The USGS/GNIS Data User's Guide (1987; page 7) offers the following notes about this field which may be of interest:

"The first coordinate in this element is termed the primary coordinate. In the case of areal features, [the coordinates] represent the approximate center of the feature, while the primary coordinates of linear features represent the mouth. The mouth is where the feature joins another feature, ends in a delta or is an alluvial fan, or no longer has a discernible channel or trough-like character... The guideline for digitizing areal features requires that the primary coordinates be taken in the center, but the location of the center of a large city is sometimes somewhat subjective. Additional guidelines for use in determining the placement of the primary geographic corrdinates of large populated places include the location of the city hall or town hall, main post office, main library, central business district, or main intersection."

The name of the topographic map on which the labeled feature is found.

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