Is map envy a thing? While most of us millennials turn to a small screen that literally dictates every turn to us for our navigation needs these days, the traditional map can be a gorgeous thing. And it’s most certainly not obsolete, especially for the hiking types.
Fast Co. Design
spoke to Matt Holly, a ranger of one our nation’s beloved national parks and curator of national parks maps. Holly has set up a site called NPMaps.com where he has compiled a collection of every national park map he has gotten his hands on, making all of the maps available for download.
If you’re a parks junkie, maybe you’re saying, “big deal, all of the national parks maps are designed per regulation at Harpers Ferry Center by the same guy.” Well, calm down, Leslie Knope. Holly has a particular interest in collecting maps designed by rangers local to the given park. This means that these maps each have a unique style and were drawn with much more passion and detail, thanks to the extensive wisdom of the ranger.
Flip through our gallery to see some of Holly’s favorite maps, with quotes from him about what makes each one of them beautiful, and find the complete collection on his website here.
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Death Valley, Calif. - "One feature I particularly enjoy on some of the newer maps is the use of a mask to highlight the park area compared to the surrounding terrain. Notice how in the Death Valley map, it shows the topography both inside and outside the park, yet the park is still easy to distinguish and really jumps off the page. This is a great example of realistic coloring."
NPMaps.com
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West Virginia (from Harpers Ferry National Historical Parks Maps) - "It's not just big natural parks that get the love; take a look at the set of maps included in the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park brochure. First, the zoomed-out view shows the entire extent of park lands and the surrounding topography, and the Lower Town map identifies and labels the park's historic structures. Anyone can read and navigate this map even if they've never read a map before."
NPMaps.com
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Hawaii Volcanoes and Glacier Bay - "Note how Hawaii Volcanoes labels historic lava flows with dates; Glacier Bay includes dates showing the past extent of the park's glaciers. These small details add a lot—Hawaii now seems much more alive, with new lava flows occurring all the time, and Glacier Bay helps us learn how climate change is impacting our parks."
NPMaps.com
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The Great Sand Dunes of Colorado and The White Sands of New Mexico - "A couple other personal favorites include some sand dune parks, Great Sand Dunes and White Sands. What do visitors always want to know when visiting these parks? 'Why is there all this sand here?' Both maps include simplified diagrams drawn onto the landscape to show how wind and water interact to help form the dunes. And in both maps, realistic colors and topography make it much easier for visitors to orient themselves compared to using a flat monochrome map."
NPMaps.com
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The Kenai Fjords of Alaska - "The Kenai Fjords map is one of the best in terms of evoking personal wonder and excitement in me. Most visitors to the park just go to Exit Glacier—the only road-accessible location from Seward. "But look at that map! Look how much more of the park there is to see! Look at all that ice and all those fjords! And are those campsites out there on the water? How do I get there? I want to go to there." Exit Glacier is pretty awe-inspiring from a personal visit, but a look at this map shows how tiny Exit Glacier is compared to the rest of the park."
NPMaps.com
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Dry Tortugas of Florida - "I'd be remiss if I didn't share this map with you, simply because of that beautiful blue color!"
NPMaps.com