Gtopo is a program for viewing the National Geographic Survey's Topographic Map sets on a computer running linux
(or on a MAC running OS-X, or any computer with GTK).

I am not giving away the maps themselves, just providing an alternate piece of software. Gtopo uses GTK-2.0 and provides a simple and nice viewer for map images. The program was written in July of 2007 and is actively being developed. I am pleased if people download and use it and would be grateful to know how it works for them.

It now works quite well for viewing the TOPO! series files, and current development is focused on allowing it to obtain maps (and photos) from terraserver, which among other things, will make it useful for people who do not own TOPO! series collections (stay tuned!).

• DOWNLOAD gtopo 0.9.21 --- 5-16-2013.
• gtopo documentation.
• download other versions (and stuff).
• Gtopo news.
• Gtopo progress and status.
• Index of selected TOPO! disks.
• Notes on Alaska support.
• GPS information.

The following link is where I have collected a lot of reference information. None of it is essential reading if you just want to use gtopo, but it should be of interest to people who want to learn about maps, GIS, gtopo internals, file formats, Terraserver, the USGS MRDS database and more!

• Reference Information.
• Running TOPO! using wine under linux.

I have recently become interested in the idea of using an all solid state tablet to carry maps and run gtopo (or something like gtopo). I have developed an android application that does this, and which is essentially a translation of gtopo into java to run on the Android. This runs, but I have not yet made it available to the public. Contact me if you are interested.

• Tablets

You also may want to take a look at PyTopo which can be used to look at topo maps with other file formats.