Help!! I need to update our CRA Public Files and don't have a good resource for census tract mapping. The products that I've looked at are very nice, but also very expensive! Any suggestions?!?

Vicki Rae

Vicki, I would recommend that you contact Don Narup at CRA Information Service. I have used him in the past and I feel he does outstanding work. His phone number is 800-995-5448.

I agree that I'd call Don (although he'll likely see your post) but if you want free, look to the Census data and maps. These are 1990 and 2000, but you'll work for what you get. Hopefully you also have a broadband connection playing with the maps.

For outsourcing you can calso call a company named PCi in Boston at 1-800-261-3111 and ask for E-Wiz. This service will produce maps and reports for a nominal fee. The census site uses Tiger maps and that is a fairly interactive free mapper. Good luck.

Go to www.census.gov to get look at maps on your PC. To get directly to the list of county maps for my state, I go to www.ftp2.census.gov/plmap/pl_trt/st55_Wisconsin. (There are underlines between pl_trt and st55_Wisconsin.) I would think you could get to your state just by changing the web address to your state number and name at the end of the address string.

The Wisconsin link did not work. One reason is the period at the end of the link, but removing that did not solve the problem.

It may be that Nanwa "built" that map and it is in her cache. The site goes to an ftp page so it may be that we can't get there from here. We'd have to start from scratch... I think.

Thanks to all of you who offered suggestions here. I appreciate it.

I use a Microsoft MapPoint 2001. You can produce a data map that shows the boundaries and number of each CT. Not all communities are there but using the "pushpin" feature, you can insert names of communities (and other info) I think I paid about $50 for the software. It produces a quality colored map.

I originally went in through census.gov and clicked through that site until I came to the map section. I thought I was saving some keystrokes by giving the address of the maps by county page. Sorry!