US Map / About
About mapofamerica.net
An independent reference site for maps of the United States — every map drawn from public-domain government data, every page free to use.
What this site is
mapofamerica.net publishes one thing: clear maps of the United States and the plain facts that belong with them. There are pages for all 50 states, the 100 largest cities, every state's county map, the four Census regions and nine divisions, the six time zones, and the rivers, mountains and coasts under physical geography. Everything is a static HTML page: no accounts, no paywall, no interstitials, and no third-party scripts. The interactive maps run on a self-hosted copy of Leaflet and a single GeoJSON file, so the pages load and print the same way in five years as they do today.
Where the data comes from
| County boundaries | US Census Bureau cartographic county boundary file, 1:5,000,000 scale, public domain — the source for every county map and, merged, for every single-state outline |
| State boundaries | A generalised public-domain state outline file derived from the same Census cartographic series; it draws the national printable maps and the interactive map |
| Population figures | Census Bureau Population Estimates Program, vintage 2024 — the July 1, 2024 estimates for states, counties and incorporated places |
| Land areas | The published area figure on each county in the Census boundary file, summed by state |
| City-to-county assignments | Census Bureau 2020 place-by-county relationship file |
| Capitals, borders, statehood order, Census divisions | Curated by hand and checked against the congressional acts of admission — no single federal product publishes these together |
| Time zone boundaries | US Department of Transportation regulations, 49 CFR Part 71 |
Population counts are estimates, not a census count, and they are revised each year — that is why every figure on the site is labeled as a 2024 estimate rather than presented as a fixed fact. Where a city's boundaries make its number odd, the page says so: Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Lexington and Anchorage are consolidated city-county governments, so their populations cover an entire county, and Honolulu is a census-designated place rather than an incorporated city. Those quirks change the ranking of the 100 largest cities more than any recent growth does.
How the maps are drawn
The printable maps are generated as SVG directly from the boundary files with a short Python script — no tracing, no clip art. The national maps use an Albers equal-area conic projection with standard parallels at 29.5°N and 45.5°N, the same projection the Census Bureau uses for national thematic maps, with Alaska and Hawaii placed as insets at their own scales. Each single-state map is re-projected to standard parallels drawn from that state's own latitude range, so Florida and Montana are each shown with minimal distortion rather than squeezed into a national grid. County maps come from the 1:5m county boundary file; the state outline on each one is the union of its counties, so the two always agree.
Using the maps
The underlying boundary data is public domain, and the SVG files rendered from it are free to use, print, modify and redistribute for personal, classroom and commercial work — no attribution required, though a link back is always welcome. That covers everything under printable US maps and blank US maps, including all 50 state outlines. The written text on the site is not public domain; quote it with a link rather than republishing pages wholesale.
Corrections
Geography pages carry a lot of numbers, and river lengths and mountain elevations are measured differently by different agencies. If something here is wrong — a border described backwards, a county seat that moved, a figure that no longer matches the current estimate — write to [email protected] and it will be fixed. See the contact page for what is useful to include, and the privacy page for what this site does and does not collect.