Did you know that George Washington was a cartographer? He was a surveyor and map maker in his early years, and continued to make his own maps for practical purposes throughout his life. Cool, right?George's StyleHere is a map he made of his farm, just dripping with hand-wrought charm:The ArcGIS Pro style available here is compiled of material textures and George's hand-drawn elements sampled from this very map. That means, when you use it, your map is wrought in the very hand of George Washington. What a time to be alive.Check out these examples that Ernst Eijkelenboom whipped up of his native Netherlands...Glorious.What You GetAre you ready to cartographicize like the first president of the United States? Here's what you'll find in the style...How to Install?Save this style file somewhere on your computer. Then, in Pro, open up the Catalog view, and expand the Style category. Right-click, and choose “Add.” Then just browse to where you saved George Washington. Pow! You’ll be whipping up maps that look like they were scribed by the right hand (I surmise, based on the way his trees lean) of George, himself.If you would like to make your own styles, based on the texture images I extracted from George’s map, then you can have at them here.Happy Presidential Throwback Mapping! John Nelson

Yarrrrrrrr maps are too crisp and clean! You need a hand-painted grubby tattered treasure map from antiquity to make yer point. Download this here style for ArrrrrrcGIS Pro and be off to makin dern-near realistic maps ready for an eager public (or set designerrrr).To be used in conjunction with these tattered paper assets, available here (seriously, it's a pretty important bit). Or you can use them with an assortment of paper textures, available in Living Atlas here.Also, there's two cool hand-inked looking north arrows in the style. You can see them in the sample maps above.Happy Mapping! John Nelson

The Vintage Shaded Relief basemap, with transition to World Imagery at smaller scales. Human Geography labels provided for optional locational context.Find the source hillshade artistry at https://www.shadedreliefarchive.com/world_townsend1.html.Learn how to make blended layers like this map's basemap tiles, here: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/mapping/vintage-shaded-relief-basemap/. And if you liked that, get the backstory here: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/how-to-smash-vintage-hillshade-into-modern-imagery/About the basemap:The hillshade is an extract of the darkest and lightest tones in this vintage mid-century shaded relief plate hand painted by Kenneth Townsend. Mid-tones are transparent to permit a visual pass-through of an underlying satellite imagery layer. Another, unaltered, instance of this shaded relief plate is shown at 80% transparency to provide painterly hues and texture. Mr. Townsend's source plate is available as a georeferenced TIFF file at https://www.shadedreliefarchive.com/world_townsend1.html.Learn more about this, and other, shaded relief via the archive, maintained by Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny, here: https://www.shadedreliefarchive.com/about.htmlThe underlying satellite imagery is derived from the NASA blue marble project's Visible Earth mosaics of cloud-free imagery, available here: https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=73826Cartographic layers, such as the oceans overlay, graticule, and lakes and rivers, are a combination of custom layers and content sourced from Natural Earth. Their pencil strokes and paper texture backgrounds can be found in the ArcGIS Pro Watercolor style, available here: https://esri-styles.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=936edb7f57334763a8247d1019a9de51Happy Vintage Mapping! John Nelson

A reverse-engineering of the methods and color palette used by renown Swiss relief painter Eduard Imhof, toward the goal of creating a digital homage for modern cartographers. Links are provided in this Cascade Story Map to an ArcGIS Pro style resource and project package. Cartographers are invited to get the scoop on the aesthetic technique then start cranking out glorious hillshade maps of their own.This story map provides links to an ArcGIS Pro project package with the requisite layers and style ready to go, just pan and zoom around!Happy Mountain Mapping! John Nelson

I'd like you to make downloading, implementing, and sharing the output of, this felt-tastic style your new highest priority.So what do you get when you download this style, besides a rush of craft-induced adrenaline? These symbols...I've seeded the style with some pre-colored symbols but each and every one of these felty symbols can be dyed whatever color you want in the symbology panel. Here are some example maps using this style...Happy Mapping! John Nelson

Sometimes a basic solid color for your map's labels and text just isn't going to cut it. Here is an ArcGIS Pro style with light and dark gradient fills and shadow/glow effects that you can apply to map text via the "Text fill symbol" picker in your label pane. Level up those labels! Make them look touchable. Glassy. Shady. Intriguing.Find a how-to here.Save this style, add it to your ArcGIS Pro project, then use it for any text (including labels).**UPDATE**I've added a symbol that makes text look like is being illuminated from below, casting a shadow upwards and behind. Pretty dramatic if you ask me. Here is an example:Happy Mapping! John Nelson

Watercolor maps are beautiful. Maps made in ArcGIS Pro can use a watercolor style to look realistically watercolory. Therefore, according to the transitive property, we can say that these maps may be beautiful.There are many utilities for a style like this. Mapping local parks and communities, creating your own vector basemaps, transforming digital features into plausibly tangible art, or just getting inspired by the combined wonder of geography and texture.Here are some example swatches of the point, line, and polygon styles available herein.Here are a couple examples of their use in Pro:Happy watercoloring! John Nelson

description: This data is from the geologic map of the Paducah 1 x2 Sheet, digitized by the Illinois State Geological Survey, John Nelson directing. We obtained the digitized, exported coverage of faults and geology from Barb Stiff (stiff@geoserv.isgs.uiuc.edu) 1995.09.05 Our intent is to show the overall fault pattern, and to show the locations of the main exposed and near-surface faults for comparison to deep subsurface structures. We made little attempt to edit details of the digitized faults, beyond adding tick marks to indicate dip directions of a few normal faults. For details such as exact locations, fault dips, separations, and cross- cutting relations, users should consult the original geologic maps.; abstract: This data is from the geologic map of the Paducah 1 x2 Sheet, digitized by the Illinois State Geological Survey, John Nelson directing. We obtained the digitized, exported coverage of faults and geology from Barb Stiff (stiff@geoserv.isgs.uiuc.edu) 1995.09.05 Our intent is to show the overall fault pattern, and to show the locations of the main exposed and near-surface faults for comparison to deep subsurface structures. We made little attempt to edit details of the digitized faults, beyond adding tick marks to indicate dip directions of a few normal faults. For details such as exact locations, fault dips, separations, and cross- cutting relations, users should consult the original geologic maps.

Created in the method described here: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/mapping/vintage-shaded-relief-basemap/. Scintillating backstory here: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/how-to-smash-vintage-hillshade-into-modern-imagery/This basemap extends from zoom levels 0 - 9, though levels 8 and 9 are pixelated and primarily intended to be a transitional hand-off to a small scale tile set, like World Imagery. See this transition in the example web map here: https://nation.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=ccbfec91e19d4f9fb0769af361c31516The hillshade is an extract of the darkest and lightest tones in this vintage mid-century shaded relief plate hand painted by Kenneth Townsend. Mid-tones are transparent to permit a visual pass-through of an underlying satellite imagery layer. Another, unaltered, instance of this shaded relief plate is shown at 80% transparency to provide painterly hues and texture. Mr. Townsend's source plate is available as a georeferenced TIFF file at https://www.shadedreliefarchive.com/world_townsend1.htmlLearn more about this, and other, shaded relief via the archive, maintained by Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny, here: https://www.shadedreliefarchive.com/about.htmlThe underlying satellite imagery is derived from the NASA blue marble project's Visible Earth mosaics of cloud-free imagery, available here: https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=73826Cartographic layers, such as the oceans overlay, graticule, and lakes and rivers, are a combination of custom layers and content sourced from Natural Earth. Their pencil strokes and paper texture backgrounds can be found in the ArcGIS Pro Watercolor style, available here: https://esri-styles.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=936edb7f57334763a8247d1019a9de51Happy Vintage Basemapping! John Nelson

Created in the method described here: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-online/mapping/vintage-shaded-relief-basemap/. Scintillating backstory here: https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-pro/mapping/how-to-smash-vintage-hillshade-into-modern-imagery/This basemap extends from zoom levels 0 - 9, though levels 8 and 9 are pixelated and primarily intended to be a transitional hand-off to a small scale tile set, like World Imagery. See this transition in the example web map here: https://nation.maps.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=ccbfec91e19d4f9fb0769af361c31516The hillshade is an extract of the darkest and lightest tones in this vintage mid-century shaded relief plate hand painted by Kenneth Townsend. Mid-tones are transparent to permit a visual pass-through of an underlying satellite imagery layer. Another, unaltered, instance of this shaded relief plate is shown at 80% transparency to provide painterly hues and texture. Mr. Townsend's source plate is available as a georeferenced TIFF file at https://www.shadedreliefarchive.com/world_townsend1.htmlLearn more about this, and other, shaded relief via the archive, maintained by Tom Patterson and Bernhard Jenny, here: https://www.shadedreliefarchive.com/about.htmlThe underlying satellite imagery is derived from the NASA blue marble project's Visible Earth mosaics of cloud-free imagery, available here: https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=73826Cartographic layers, such as the oceans overlay, graticule, and lakes and rivers, are a combination of custom layers and content sourced from Natural Earth. Their pencil strokes and paper texture backgrounds can be found in the ArcGIS Pro Watercolor style, available here: https://esri-styles.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=936edb7f57334763a8247d1019a9de51Happy Vintage Basemapping! John Nelson

Inspired by the book, Dirkzwager’s Guide to the New-Waterway, Rotterdam, Dordrecht, Europoort and Botlek for 1978, this style re-creates its crisp modernist colors balanced with charming hand-drawn landcover features and incorporates the tangible variability of print ink and aged paper.I was shown a wonderful example, provided by Eelco Berghuis, which was a gift from his grandfather.So I sampled colors and created fill and line symbol features with a print-like texture and bleed. When applied (admittedly pretty haphazardly) to New York City (New Amsterdam), for example, the style looks like this...And here are the style elements that comprise it...Happy Harbor Mapping! John Nelson

Created to honor the impressionistic atmospheric quality of the work of Swiss topographic painter and cartographer, Eduard Imhof. These symbols and palettes allow for the application of an homage aesthetic when applied to layered hillshades and digital elevation models. An accompanying how-to resource is forthcoming.In the meantime, the Hillshade color scheme is intended to be applied to a traditional hillshade layer and a multidirectional hillshade layer. The Mist color scheme is intended to be applied to a DEM layer. When viewed in concert with an imagery basemap, the hues and opacities combine to create a distinctive quality.Here it is at a broader scale...Here is a map that uses the Area of Interest, Mask, and Locator layers...Contents:Alternatively, you can download an ArcGIS Pro project with the data and styles already implemented, and you can just start cranking away at Imhofs.Happy Topographic Painting! John Nelson

May this style be a light to you in dark places when all other light goes out.Here is a shortcut through the Mines of Moria to an ArcGIS Pro project with all this data and styles all set up and ready to go.Happy Fantasy Mapping! John Nelson

The U.S. Geological Survey's Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) has created high-resolution land cover/use data sets for the Upper Mississippi River System (UMRS) from 1:15,000-scale color infrared aerial photos collected in 1989. The data are available in two formats. The first used a detailed genus-level classification scheme and was used to classify Mississippi River Navigation Pools 4 through 26, the Open River between Grand Tower and River Mile 32, and the Peoria navigation Pool on the Illinois River. The second classification scheme was developed in 1998 in response to a scientific and programmatic review of the center's mapping projects. This classification scheme identifies plant communities and associations. This second classification scheme was used to interpret data for Mississippi River Pools 1 through 3, the Open River between Lock and Dam 26 and Grand Tower, and the Alton, Starved Rock, Marseilles, Brandon, Dresden, and Lockport navigation pools on the Illinois River. At the time this metadata document was prepared data classified underneath the first classification scheme were being cross-walked to the new scheme. This metadata document has been prepared to document the second classification scheme.

Everything is awesome!Of course I don't need to convince you of the charm, educational utility, considered minimalism, and pure joy that Lego brings to the world. So why would I need to convince you that making maps in a Lego aesthetic is worth your while?This ArcGIS Pro style makes any vector point, line, or polygon layer look like a grid of little plastic nobly studs, ready to capture eyeballs and whip up unbridled excitement for skeuomorphic cartography! Plus it always re-sorts itself as you zoom in and out, always looking nice and blocky.Created in collaboration with Warren Davison, this style is ready to assemble your map into little Lego wonders.Here are some snapshots for you to peruse.Based mainly on these two texture overlays (sitting atop a dynamically colorable background element: Happy assembling! John Nelson

The Great River Environmental Action Team (GREAT) was a federal/state multi-agency cooperative program established in the late 1970's to evaluate current resource management practices and develop management strategies for the Upper Mississippi River (UMR). One of the problems facing the GREAT project was the lack of available information on many of the river's components. One project implemented by GREAT was the creation of a land cover/land use (LCU) database derived from color infrared aerial photography collected in 1975. Mississippi River Pools 3 through 10 were photographed at a scale of 1:9,600, and Lock and Dam 10 to the Ohio River were photographed at a scale of 1:24,000. The program's photo interpreters delineated whatever features could be viewed on the photos, using a minimum mapping unit that was less than half an acre. A contractor was hired to transfer the photo overlays for Pools 3 through 14 onto 1:24,000-scale USGS quadrangles, then automate the data using the geographic information system (GIS) program PIOS. The data were also distributed as map books that contained 1:6,000-scale enlargements of the photos and their overlays. During the data transfer process; the contractor hired to automate the data generalized it to a 2.5 acre minimum mapping unit. Documentation archived by the GREAT project described this automation process as; some polygons smaller than 2.5 acres and linear features were incorporated into nearby polygons. Others were manually enlarged so that the data contained within would be preserved. All generalizations were made in accordance with the guidelines established for the GREAT projects. The digital data sets were then enhanced by the GREAT project. Unfortunately no record of the enhancements or an archive of the original digital dataset are known to exist. The enhanced digital data, copies of the aerial photo overlays, copies of most of the map books, and some of the photos themselves were archived and preserved by the various agencies that participated in the GREAT project. These data were then passed to the Upper Midwest Environmental Sciences Center (UMESC) in the late 1980's and 1990's when the center became the administrator for the Upper Mississippi River System's Long Term Resource Monitoring Program (LTRMP). Comparisons of the archived digital data set to the photos and their overlays displayed discrepancies that were difficult to document. The 1975 data set is viewed by many as an important baseline data set, so in 1999 UMESC decided to use the archived photo overlays to (1) address the data discrepancies by reautomating Pools 3 through 14, and (2) complete the data set by automating Lock and Dam 14 to the Ohio River.

Aerial photographs for Pools 1-13 Upper Mississippi River System and Pools, Alton-Marseilles, Illinois River were collected in color infrared (CIR) in August of 2010 at 8”/pixel and 16”/pixel respectively using a mapping-grade Applanix DSS 439 digital aerial camera. In August 2011, CIR aerial photographs for Pools 14-Open River South, Upper Mississippi River and Pools Dresden-Lockport, Illinois River were collected at 16”/pixel with the same camera. All CIR aerial photos were orthorectified, mosaicked, compressed, and served via the UMESC Internet site. The CIR aerial photos were interpreted and automated using a 31-class LTRMP vegetation classification. The 2010/11 LCU databases were prepared by or under the supervision of competent and trained professional staff using documented standard operated procedures and are subject to rigorous quality control (QC) assurances (NBS, 1995).

This style for ArcGIS Pro contains four north arrows. They have a glassy semitransparent white appearance with a shadow effect for better visibility over highly textured surfaces while muted enough to provide balance.Plus they're a bit of fun sizzle.Will they look good over your map? Maybe! I wouldn't try them over a solid basemap though. They will look pretty bad probably. They are intended for the busy high contrast varied hues of an imagery basemap. But of course you will do what you feel is right, which may include not using them for any map.There is an arrowhead style north arrow and a cardinal ring arrow. These are standard north arrow shapes available in ArcGIS Pro, but given the glassy appearance. A stylized "N" and a minimalist arrow were drawn as custom SVGs then added to ArcGIS Pro and given the glassy appearance.Enjoy! John Nelson

1:24,000 scale Geologic Map of the Nelson Quadrangle, Clark County, Nevada. Nevada Bureau of Mines Map 134. Detailed Geologic Mapping By Jame s E . Faulds, John W. Bell, and Eric L. Olson in 2002. Field work done 1999. Map includes two cross sections and 42 geologic units. The quadrangle includes part of the Highland range, Eldorado Valley, and Piute Valley. It contains excellent exposures of early to middle Miocene volcanic and sedimentary rocks, the upper part of the ~16.6 Ma Searchlight. Mining district. The Miocene section rests nonconformably on Early Proterozoic gneiss. As a result of the middle Miocene extension, Tertiary strata are moderately to steeply tilted and cut by complex arrays of normal faults. Flat-lying Quaternary alluvial-fan deposits dominate Eldorado and Piute Valleys and onlap tilted Miocene strata in the Highland Range. The GIS work was in support of the U.S. Geological Survey COGEOMAP program. Office Reviewers: Frank Hillemeyer, La Cuesta International, Inc., Kingman, AZ.; Jonathan Miller, Dept. of Geology, San Jose State University, San Jose, CA.; Alan Ramelli, NBMG; Eugene Smith, Dept. of Geoscience, UNLV. Field Reviewers: Frank Hillemeyer, La Cuesta International, Inc., Kingman, AZ.; Werner Hellmer, Dept. of Building, Clark County; Ryan Murphy, Dept. of Geological Sciences , University of Nevada; John Peck, Consulting Geologist, Las Vegas , NV.; Jonathan Price, NBMG; Alan Ramelli, NBMG. The geologic mapping was supported by the U.S. Geological Survey STATEMAP Program (Agreement No. HQ-AG-2036) and a grant from the National Science Foundation (E AR 98-96032). The 40Ar/39Ar dates were obtained through geochronology labs at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, for which we thank Steve Harlan, and the New Mexico Bureau of Mines, for which we thank Bill McIntosh and Matt Heizler. We greatly appreciated the hospitality of several landowners in the area, including Barney and Elaine Reagan, Gene Lambert, and John Kuyger. We also thank the Lake Mead National Recreation Area for providing housing during part of this study. Base map: U.S. Geological Survey Nelson SW 7.5' Quadrangle. To download and view this map resource, map text, and associated GIS zipped data-set, please see the links provided.

The hachure cartographic technique sketches downhill lines along bands of equal elevation to create a topographic effect. This is a rather vintage technique, giving way in the digital age to hillshading. But, shoot, there is just something wonderful about a hachured map. It has a wonderful textural quality and effectively and efficiently conveys topographic aspect and slope. This style is in a manner in keeping with that retro hand-drawn aesthetic, with inky colors, wavy-hand linework, and grainy sketchy downhill strokes.The hachures themselves are available in a few flavors ranging from simple sketched contour lines to densely packed hachures for an almost fur-like surface. Eh, why not? Also available are a handful of tuft-like point features and a few vintage polygon fills like parchment and foxed atlas paper.Let your inner cARRRRRRtographer run wild.Thanks to cartographer Jared Fischer, of the Dept. of the Interior, for his collaboration and inspiration along the way.Find more, larger, examples here.Happy Hachure Mapping! John Nelson