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Subject: Re: MAPS-L: THE Cities and THE towns
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]

Hmmm...the USGS engine seems to not work very well (It did NOT retrieve
The Dalles, Oregon, for example, when I entered "The," selected
"Oregon," and "populated place."), although it did make the retrieval
when I entered "Dalles."

Luckily, the data can be downloaded at the site.

I'm surprised anyone could consider doing this by hand.

The question is somewhat ill-defined.

You could download the "populated places" layer from that USGS site.
Unfortunately, that layer includes a lot of places that are not cities
and towns, such as "The Phoenix-Scottsdale Mobile Home Park."

It is far better to download the "FIPS55" layer, and then choose only
those entities in which the person is interested.  (Probably class codes
beginning with C (for "incorporated place", but possibly some others.)

Subsets of the FIPS55 layer are available at census.gov -- under
"gazetteer," in the files "Minor Civil Divisions" and "Census Designated
Places."

It is the latter one that many people would consider to be "cities and
towns," and carries the FIPS55 identifiers.  It is a larger dataset than
the FIPS55 restricted to class code C?, although I haven't figured out
the differences.


Hope this helps,

Joe McCollum
Information Technology Specialist
Forest Inventory and Analysis
Knoxville, TN








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