Western United States

[snodsy]

Planning on going to Bryce and Zion next year and possible a trip to Seattle, so I thought I might as well study it, so I'm doing a map of the Western United states, wanted to do a large area regional map. Seattle is at the top and the Gulf of California at the bottom, Denver will be the eastern edge. Lots of great mountain ranges, canyons and other things to try.

[Chashio]

Neat idea! And a neat map so far, as well. I look forward to seeing how you finish it.

[Diamond]

Cool idea and awesome perspective.

[waldronate]

Looks nice so far. One point to consider is the relative heights of the coast ranges in California and the Sierra Nevada on the other side of the central valley. The Sierras are much higher than the coast ranges. http://raiszmaps.com/bigmap-sample.jpg shows this fairly well.

[snodsy]

Thanks Waldronate for the map, this morning I spent a couple hours inputting elevations for the various areas on the map, as well as photo reference, this map is going to take some time, with many features, maybe bit of more than I can chew, but I'lll try.

[snodsy]

Here's an update with the Continental Divide, which will help me place the mountains better, the Cities, States and the placement of the elements I plan to include on the map, now on to the actual drawing, starting over and trying to do a better job on the line work.

[waldronate]

Nice maps of real places are harder in many ways because there's always somebody out there like me who says "But that's not how it looks!" I enjoy looking at early maps of California's Central Valley because they all show this huge feature that's not there any more: Tulare Lake. Back before the great waterworks of the late 19th and early 20th century, it was an 80-mile long and 60-mile wide lake that occupied a lot of the southern valley. It's all gone now, though, with just a bunch of agriculture occupying its former bed.

[snodsy]

This mornings update, Northern Continental Divide - Glacier to Rocky Mtn NP (Denver), with Arches and Tetons. Still not happy with line work.

[Ilanthar]

Sounds like a very interesting (and quite challenging) map. I like the angle and the colors you got so far.

[johnvanvliet]

the height data is interesting for the west
a screenshot of the west part of the use from the 7.5 arc sec topo data
--simple cylindrical map projection --