I see all these websites, usually by non-commericial types, that generate maps of the US and some with counties, etc. I know Excel has a little know map making tool, but when I went to try it again, boom!, they removed it so they can sell a seperate program to make maps! :smack: :smack: :smack: :dubious: :dubious:
Darn microsoft. Anyway, is there any freeware or shareware for making maps of US down to the county level?
Anybody?
What are you trying to do specifically? Do you need the software for projecting, viewing, and manipulating information you already have?
or are you looking for something with the state and county data included?
Do you in fact just need Images of county maps at different scales?
The answer depends heavily on what you have available/have access to and the final product you want.
If you are a student, the first place you should go is the geography department. Ask around and you may find there is a GIS lab for you to use. After running a couple tutorials (one or more of which might even involve US-scale mapping at the county level) you should be able to pound your way through making maps. OTOH, If there are any students working in the lab they can probably make a basic map for you in 5 minutes. It’s been about ten years since I used any kind of GIS tutorial, but I seem to recall a US county map in an ArcView tutorial.
I use pretty advanced GIS software at work, but when we do work for non-profits, etc. we can distribute a freeware application called ESRI ArcExplorer that allows them to use information we provide:
http://www.esri.com/software/arcexplorer/
This software will allow you to make and edit maps, provided you have the data in a format it can use, e.g., “shape files” These files are often freely available from Government agencies and Universities. For example, If you had a US-by-counties shapefile, you could use ArcExplorer to make basically any map you want.
For US stuff I would check the USGS, Dept of Census, etc. I did a quick Google search for “USCounties.shp” and found this site at Iowa State:
http://mesonet.agron.iastate.edu/data/gis/shape/unproj/us/
I did not try to download the files, though, because I’m not sure it would be legal for a non-student to do so. Mods please remove the link if this violates board rules.
Of course, this is way too complicated if all you really need is images of certain counties at certain scales. That kind of thing can probably be found on the internet by searching Google images. You could then Edit the image to display what you need. This’d be really time consuming to scale and assemble a composite image of the entire U.S., though.
I can probably give more help if you explain what exactly you’re trying to do.
I don’t know of any in particular. Are you looking for something that will display a basic map with options to display or not display particular features? Or software that you can ask geographical questions? Or just an outline that you can color in with a paint program?
The first may be available in the road atlas CDs such as this Rand-McNally atlas (although the reviews say that one sucks)
The second one is a GIS (geographical information system). You are not going to find this for cheap - there’s too much data you need and too much hard coding underneath. I did find this CD which might do what you want it to do.
I’ve seen several sites that have the county-level election results color coded - you might find one of these and ask the person how they did it. You might also find that they are at a university with access to a professional grade GIS.
If you go the ArcExplorer route (which I favor for flexibility, if not for ease-of-use), you can get plenty of basemap data here. Alternatively, they have a web-bsed viewer you can use.
Holy crap, I can’t believe I didn’t know that ArcExplorer existed! I’ve been looking for something like that since my ArcView trial expired.
Unfortunately I don’t really have any suggestions to add here; I just wanted to express appreciation for the mention of ArcExplorer.
Hi. That link didn’t work for me. Thanks to all for the ideas.
To clarify: what I want is to take some data from SPSS, or Excel, or similar which is recorded at the county level and then make a map of this for the whole US. Or parts when it comes to heavily populated areas. I guess this is like those blue/red maps and what not people are going crazy for. So, essentially, I’m building a set of maps that will have counties in a variety of colors for things such as poverty, race, etc. I’ll lookinto the freebie thing from ARC. Thanks! 
argh…preview should be my friend…
You can use the Census data (I know they have it by census tract, CBSA/MSA and state, not sure about county) as a layer in ArcExplorer, then have it color the (counties or states or tracts) according to one of its properties (population, income, education, etc.).