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Full catalog/HISTORICALCHARTS
HISTORICALCHARTS·dataset

Historic US coastal maps and nautical charts (NOAA)

NOAA Historical Maps and Charts
land NOAA NOAA active
In plain English

What it measures. A collection of old maps and charts, mostly nautical charts of US coasts, along with seafloor-depth maps, land sketches, Civil War battle maps, early aeronautical charts, and related drawings and photographs. (Note: these are historical and not for navigation.)

How it's made. Drawn from NOAA's Coast Survey and its predecessor agencies, including the US Coast and Geodetic Survey and the US Lake Survey.

How & where you'd use it. A resource for historians, researchers, and anyone studying how coastlines, surveying, and mapping have changed over time.

What's measured

aws-pdshistorymappingcoastalgeospatialsurvey

Coverage & cadence

  • Time span— → ongoing

What you can do with it

  • Track deforestation, fire scars and land-cover change
  • Monitor crop and vegetation health (NDVI/EVI)
  • Map how built-up vs. green an area is over time
Official description

Historical Charts are not for Navigation. The collection primarily consists of historic charts and maps produced by NOAA's Coast Survey and its predecessors, especially the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and the U.S. Lake Survey (previously under the Department of War). The collection also includes bathymetric maps, land sketches, Civil War battle maps, aeronautical charting from the 1930s to the 1950s, and other drawings and photographs.

Get the data

noaa_access.py
# NOAA Open Data on AWS — public S3, no login
import s3fs

fs = s3fs.S3FileSystem(anon=True)
# find this dataset's bucket in the docs link in the sidebar, then:
# files = fs.ls("noaa-<bucket>/...")
# open NetCDF/GRIB with xarray, COGs with rioxarray
NOAA Open Data is on public AWS S3 — no login at all (anonymous access).