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I'm looking for accurate US county boundaries in shapefile (most likely), feature class, or a geodatabase. Specifically, I'm looking for Midwestern US states: Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, and Wisconsin.

Any ideas?

Patrick Hoefler
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DenaliHardtail
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2 Answers2

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You might find these cartographic boundary shapefiles for U.S. Counties useful: http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/cbf/cbf_counties.html

Kotebiya
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  • And that suggestion led me to their TIGER data @ http://www.census.gov/geo/maps-data/data/tiger.html. I'm not sure which will be better for us but it looks like I have some options. – DenaliHardtail Feb 11 '15 at 22:23
  • You could use the other shapefiles. But TIGER shapefiles are based on administrative boundaries, and cartographic shapefiles are based on land boundaries. If you are curious about the difference, just load the shapefiles. You will IMMEDIATELY notice the difference since you are using Michigan. – Kotebiya Feb 11 '15 at 23:23
  • there is no doubt you'll see the difference but I'm not concerned with that for this use. I have access to high res, detailed boundaries of the Great Lakes that I can use to clean up the administrative boundaries along the Great Lakes. – DenaliHardtail Feb 12 '15 at 16:33
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The Centers for Disease Control provide county-level shape files. https://wwwn.cdc.gov/epiinfo/html/shapefiles.htm They are in ESRI shapefile format but, CDC restricts their use to Epi Map.

Brennan
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