Park Co, WY

[TWorth]

I'm finding many of the Park Co, WY elevations are off. I recall when working on that area a few years ago some of the maps had the handwritten spot elevations, some of them didn't.

The maps w/o the spots are USFS maps. A USGS employee told me a while back they are the same as the USGS maps, except some information is added such as property lines boundaries, and other items are removed, such as spot elevations. The spots on the original USGS maps are still valid, they were removed from the USFS maps because that agency deemed them not necessary for their purposes, not because the figures were inaccurate.

So it looks like some summit, and possibly saddle elevations, were taken from USFS quads, which results in a lot of interpolated values where there shouldn't be.

There are other inconsistencies, like on the Stinkingwater Peak Quad. Looks like 11125 and Dike Mountain have the correct elevation based on the USGS spots, despite the spots not being printed on the USFS map, while 10500 and others have spots on the USGS maps which didn't get recorded. Strange this would happen on the same quad. Looks like MyTopo uses the USFS maps.

I'd thought the NG TOPO! program used all USGS maps but that must not be correct. Since the dates on the USFS maps are more recent, in some cases they might have been used over the USGS maps.

Just an FYI for John and anyone else who has an interest. Since I've been active in this area lately, I'd be happy to find all the changes in a month or so when I get off the road.