Maritime Cultural Landscapes
Archival Resources

Finding All the T-Sheets and Published Maps and Charts

A good portion, but not by any means all, of the historic Coast Survey maps and charts, and T-Sheets, have been scanned from archives at NOAA, the National Archives, and the Library of Congress. These are now available for downloading at the Historic Maps and Charts website of the Office of Coast Survey, in the National Ocean Service, NOAA, the direct successor of the Survey of the Coast.

You've already seen the map tools of the footprint maps for the T-sheets and historic maps and charts. Another major tool is the OCS database, another key finding aid to secure the historic maps and charts and T-sheets that you might want. You can query the database, and in response to that, pull up preview images of the maps and charts, and URLs that will allow you to immediately download images.

Once you've studied the T-sheet and map and chart footprint maps, and have at least some idea about the maps you hope to find, then you're ready for the OCS database system. There are various ways to query the database, but we recommend starting here:

http://historicalcharts.noaa.gov/historicals/search_attributes

As, in the guide, we are starting with maps related to the Gulf of the Farallones Sanctuary, begin by selecting the map type "T-Sheet" and the state "CA" for California. The search recovers over 370 T-Sheets. You can click on the blue columns title "Year Published" to order the results by year, starting with the initial 1850 T-Sheet of Point Conception (OK, starting with two undated maps, then Point Conception, T-313). Or try clicking on "Chart Number" and, after a few problem maps, you'll find T00313, then T00316, etc. For all of these maps, if you click on the "Preview" for each one, you'll see an image of the entire map. The blue URL under the preview, if clicked, leads you to downloading the full resolution digital image of that map.

For the published maps and charts, go back to the top of the search query, select "Nautical Chart" (OK, there are some other versions of these you can try too, but start with "Nautical Chart") and "CA" and see what you get. By clicking on "Year Published" or "Chart Number" or also be putting in a specific year, or a range of years, you can narrow down the selections. Click on the preview images, and with luck, you'll soon discover the maps you want.

This is just the most basic of instructions on the query database. Although there are some errors and typos in the data, it is a powerful database accessing tens of thousands of historic maps and charts. Good luck!