Letter of Recommendation: U.S.G.S. Topographical Maps

By TOM VANDERBILT MAY 11, 2016

At the close of the Second World War, the United States government embarked on an enormous artistic enterprise. It is estimated to have cost nearly $3 billion and, at its height, employed more than 2,000 people. I am talking about the topographic mapping program of the United States Geological Survey. It was an opus of Whitmanesque proportion, a heroic rendering of the American landscape; every last whorl and hachure and dotted line of actual topography — not to mention the name of every last desert wash, old mine or glorified goat track — was exhaustively cataloged. This 54,000-tile mosaic was not, of course, done in the cause of aesthetics, but it nevertheless represents as gorgeous and complete a depiction of the country as any ever made.

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