OVERVIEW

This datalayer represents place names for geographic features, which may be used for map labels. They are grouped into three categories:

• hydrographic features - lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, bays, harbors, channels
• civic features - city and town names, sections, villages
• hypsographic features - hills, mountains, points, beaches, islands

The data were taken from an older statewide datalayer named GEONAMES, based on annotation as it appears on the U.S. Geological Survey's 1:24,000/1:25,000 Topographic maps. The GIS Group at the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection underwent a statewide quality checking of the data, which included adjusting the position of each label to best match its feature.

ARC/INFO coverages of feature type Annotation are named GNM. Three subclasses of annotation exist: HYDRO, PLACES, and HYPSO. In ArcSDE and personal geodatabases the layers are stored as GEONAMES_ANNO_HYDRO, GEONAMES_ANNO_PLACES, and GEONAMES_ANNO_HYPSO.

Because the shapefile format cannot store annotation, MassGIS has created point and line features, stored in ArcSDE as GEONAMES_PT_HYDRO, GEONAMES_LINE_HYDRO, GEONAMES_PT_PLACES, and GEONAMES_PT_HYPSO. These layers are distributed on MassGIS Data Viewer CDs in shapefile format, located in the gisdata/men1/physical_resources folder. When using these layers for labelling purposes, the actual features may be displayed with no color (making them invisible), but with labels turned on. See sample image.

On MassGIS Data Viewer CDs the ArcInfo coverage annotation is used in this Viewer menu choice:
CATEGORY:  Physical Resources
SUBCATEGORY:  Geographic Names
DATASET NAME:  Geographic Names

The hydrography labels may be accessed with this Viewer menu choice:
CATEGORY:  Physical Resources
SUBCATEGORY:  Hydrography (Water Features)
DATASET NAME:  Hydrography - 25k USGS (Labels)

The DEP GIS Group and MassGIS maintain the data.

In March 2003 tiles 146 and 147 were edited.

Last Updated 3/3/2005
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