Maps: Army Map Service (AMS) Topographic Maps of China

[Bryan]

Topographic maps of the Great Wall of China. These maps are 1:250,000 scale. They are the largest scale maps you will find with romanized characters. They have been scanned at a very high resolution. The Great Wall is clearly indicated on these maps.

Romanization is in the Wade-Giles system as opposed to Pinyin.

These maps have been released by the CIA. The maps are in the public domain and are not copyrighted. They are dated 1968.

Map sections are jpeg files of about 6 MB each. Maps are downloaded from the following two index pages. Printed maps are no longer available.

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/manchuria Maps NK-50-7, NK-50-11, and NK-50-12

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/ams/china Maps NK-50-10 and westward from there.

[sophie]

Wow, these are big maps! How can we print them out once we find the ones we need?

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by sophie

Wow, these are big maps! How can we print them out once we find the ones we need?

You will need some software for this job. If you're using Windows Vista, Windows Photo Gallery can be used to crop and rotate the image, and then print it scaled down to your paper size. You can also use third-party programs such as Photoshop; the Print Options dialog box will allow you to scale and preview the maps before printing. Or, you can use a program like Microsoft Word, controlling the image size by changing the margins or dragging the corners of the image.

[sophie]

Thank you Bryan, we used Word. We tested one picture and we were able to print the parts we needed in color on separate papers without making any changes to the maps that we downloaded..

[chinoook]

The maps are superb. I will try to calibrate them and then to add the Great Wall information to our map. Did anyone before try to calibrate these maps?


-chinoook

[Bryan]

Originally Posted by chinoook

The maps are superb. I will try to calibrate them and then to add the Great Wall information to our map. Did anyone before try to calibrate these maps?


-chinoook

I have just used Photoshop to scale them and overlay them onto other maps such as Beijing Shi Ditu.

I wish I knew how to get them onto my GPS!