I thought this was really cool when I found it, so I wrote something up on how to overlay and use topo maps in Google Earth. Someone even made a way to overlay historical maps!!!

I just figured this out the other day! Absolutely love it. I'm a bit of a google earth addict, but it does keep me stoked about trail running and exploring/linking different trails as well as calculating mileage

I really like the historical maps too, which sometimes have more accurate trails and also other trails to explore which have been erased from current usgs topos.

Ze wrote:I thought this was really cool when I found it, so I wrote something up on how to overlay and use topo maps in Google Earth. Someone even made a way to overlay historical maps!!!

Nice. This looks much easier and faster than the "old" way of overlaying topos on GE (using the GPSVisualizer.com overlay plugin).

Coolest.

NASA used to do that will the moon missions, they called 'em orthophotomaps.

http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-LTO.html

Now you can view the elevation profiles of routes you make in Google Earth. A great combo with the topo overlay that I think makes it superior to TOPO and others.