Towns / Cities

[MountainWoods]

I really love this site and the maps.  I've downloaded a bunch of them that I will regularly use.  I was wondering about one thing.

I noticed that the topos often do not have town names.  It's not a big deal, because I'll generally use a physical map or my car GPS to get where I'm going and/or know where I'm at.  But I was wondering if either

• There is something that I'm missing (perhaps a specific zoom level?)
• Is there an overlay with just city names and/or other government data (county boundaries, etc.)?

In any case it's not a big deal.  But I was just wondering.
Thanks a million!

[maps4gps]

See Oz's US states and counties boundaries mapset: http://gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/10/

For city names you can quickly zoom out to Garmin's basemap and then zoom in.

[MountainWoods]

Actually, I noticed that the topo does have the town name. I just need to look for the little lime diamond, on both BaseCamp and the unit.  That's good to know.

I installed the US States and Counties map, but I don't see any difference in BaseCamp.  (I haven't installed it on the eTrex 20 yet.)  It's not in the map drop-down.   But in case, as an overlay, it isn't supposed to be, I panned over to a county boundary, which is in the topo from this site (motopo11), but when I chose the Global Map, the county boundary doesn't show.  In other words, it doesn't add anything to Garmin's base map, and it isn't needed for topos from this site, because the boundaries are already there.

On the eTrex 20, if I use Where To? --> Cities, I get a bunch of entries that begin
map created with http:/
and are truncated at that point.  If I click into one of them it only gives me a tiny bit more:
map created with http://c
and leaves the arrow pointing at the center of a map section from the downloaded topo.  That is "Cities" are actually references to the map sections, not cities.
But that's OK.  If I use Where To? --> Geographic Points --> Manmade Places (or All Categories), I do find the nearest towns/cities in that.

[MountainWoods]

The US States and Counties shows up in MapSource and in MapInstall, but not in BaseCamp's Maps --> Map Product list (or toolbar dropdown).  Odd...

[maps4gps]

The 'map created by ...' is a 'watermark' the cgpsmapper software adds to each .img file is creates.  The software uses one of Garmin's codes for 'city features'. 

[MountainWoods]

Got it.  That renders the search for cities as unavailable; but searching for Geographical Points does the trick.  Makes sense.  Not a bid deal either.  How many times have I had to search for a city on a handheld unit?  Maybe once: just to make sure that the new maps were showing - ha!

[schweady]

The US States and Counties shows up in MapSource and in MapInstall, but not in BaseCamp's Maps --> Map Product list (or toolbar dropdown).  Odd...

I just noticed this, too. Is this a known non-feature? or am I (are we) doing something wrong?

[MountainWoods]

I didn't figure out why.  But the information in the 2 segment US States and Counties map file is redundant with the information in the topos.  It doesn't have towns or cities, just state and county boundaries.  I went ahead and uninstalled it.  As long as the unit shows the cities in the Geographical Features page, it'll work for me.