The Historic Topographic Maps of California (HISTOPO) project was first conceived in May 1999 to provide Web access to high use maps from the University of California-Berkeley's Earth Sciences and Map Library's collection. The U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) topographic quadrangles of the San Francisco Bay region were selected for digitizing.

350 maps were carefully selected to represent a historic perspective of the changing landscape of the region from rural to densely urban. Efforts were made to only digitize first editions of quadrangles and not use reprint editions where the date of situation was uncertain. Some editions of the quadrangles were published by the Corps of Engineers, the Army Map Service, or the Defense Mapping Agency

Access is provided to both the 15- and 7.5-minute USGS topographic quadrangles, spanning more than 100 years of mapping (1885-1999). Geographic coverage extends from Point Reyes south to Half Moon Bay and east to Antioch, Livermore, and San Jose.

The maps are presented on the site in MrSID format. MrSID files, though they appear to be images like TIFF, JPEG, or GIF files work very differently than other image file types. In order to view them whether online or as a saved file, you need to install the Lizard Tech Express View plug-in.

The trick is to know that what you see isn’t a scalable image. When you print the MrSID files, they print as what is on the screen. The result is more like a screen capture than printing JPEG or TIFF files. With MrSID files, what you see on the screen is what you get on paper.

Below are the steps you can take to either print or save zoomed-in portions of the historic topographic maps from the HISTOPO site:

PRINTING

1. Find the area of the map you’re interested in printing:

2. If you’re satisfied with the view that includes the web page information (e.g. the toolbar button legend), use the print function in the browser (e.g. File | Print or Cntrl + p). The result is:

3. If you’d like to print just the image of the map, right click on the map and select print from the context menu. This will result in:

4. Remember, you can only print the map image that is in the viewer, not the entire map.

5. If you try to print the entire map, it’s going to result in a small, illegible map:

SAVING

You can save MrSID files as TIFF, JPEG, or GIF files for use in Word, PowerPoint, etc. You’re still limited to a portion of the map and the resolution won’t necessarily be as good, but it’s better than scanning a print!

1. Find the area of the map you’re interested in saving:

2. Right click on the image and select “Save As:”

3. Next, choose the format in which you would like to save the image (e.g. jpeg, tiff, geotiff, etc.):

4. You can now edit the image using Photoshop, Windows Picture and Fax Viewer, etc. or import the image into another document or presentation. If you have problems using the HISTOPO site, please contact us at the Earth Sciences and Maps Library.