TopoQuest
Overview
Web mapping
Web mapping is the process of designing, implementing, generating and delivering maps on the World Wide Web and its product. While web mapping primarily deals with technological issues, web cartography additionally studies theoretic aspects: the use of web maps, the evaluation and optimization of...
service built on open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
software that provides internet-based topographic maps for most of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
.
The site is one of three internet services used by Wikipedia
Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...
for providing topographic maps. It arose to prominence in May 2008 after TopoZone
TopoZone
TopoZone was a website operated by Demand Media from 1999 to 2008 that offered free online topographic maps.It was founded in November 1999 by Ed McNierney whose company Maps a la carte, Inc. operated out of North Chelmsford, Massachusetts...
through its new trails.com owners required payment for access to its maps. TopoQuest map links are the same as Topozone's except for the difference in the domain.
It is operated by Ryan Niemi in Klamath Falls, Oregon
Klamath Falls, Oregon
Klamath Falls is a city in Klamath County, Oregon, United States. Originally called Linkville when George Nurse founded the town in 1867, after the Link River on whose falls this city sat, although no falls currently exist; the name was changed to Klamath Falls in 1892...
.
Niemi first experimented with a mapping program in July 2001 as a Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, PHP
PHP
PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language originally designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. For this purpose, PHP code is embedded into the HTML source document and interpreted by a web server with a PHP processor module, which generates the web page document...
and MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
alternative to Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
's TerraServer-USA
TerraServer-USA
Microsoft Research Maps or MSR Maps is a free online repository of public domain aerial imagery and topographic maps provided by the U.S. Geological Survey . The site is a collaboration between Microsoft Research , Bing Maps, and the USGS. It has been under continuous operation since June 1998. It...
topographic mapviewer.
The domain was registered at Go Daddy
Go Daddy
Go Daddy is an Internet domain registrar and Web hosting company that also sells e-business related software and services. In 2010, it reached more than 45 million domain names under management. Go Daddy is currently the largest ICANN-accredited registrar in the world, and is four times the size of...
to Sunset Dynamics on August 10, 2004.
However Niemi did not aggressively develop the website because of the success of Topozone.
After Topozone started the for pay business model on April 8, 2008, Niemi made updates to get the website to match the Topozone URL methodology for viewing 1:24K USGS Digital raster graphic
Digital raster graphic
A digital raster graphic is a digital image resulting from scanning a paper USGS topographic map for use on a computer. DRGs created by USGS are typically scanned at 250 dpi and saved as a TIFF. The raster image usually includes the original border information, referred to as the "map collar". ...
maps available from the Libre Map Project
Libre Map Project
The Libre Map Project is an online collection of all digital USGS 1:24K scale topographic maps covering the United States, available as a free download....
and Internet Archive
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library with the stated mission of "universal access to all knowledge". It offers permanent storage and access to collections of digitized materials, including websites, music, moving images, and nearly 3 million public domain books. The Internet Archive...
and was operating by May 2008.
Code was adapted from the MapServer
MapServer
MapServer is an open source development environment for building spatially-enabled internet applications. It can run as a CGI program or via MapScript which supports several programming languages . MapServer was developed by the University of Minnesota — so, it is often and more specifically...
project at the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
.