Free tool
Your hometown in contour steps
Type a US address or paste coordinates. We pull the real elevation from the USGS and draw it in the same stepped contours our Place Tile is printed in, lakes in the accent color.
How the steps are drawn
The elevation grid is smoothed a little, the lowest and highest points set the range, and the range is split into equal steps. Every sample takes the step it falls in, so a gentle town gets wide terraces and a mountain gets narrow ones. Lakes and reservoirs, which the USGS data holds perfectly flat, are found and kept on their own level in the accent color. The light comes from the north west, the way relief maps are lit.
That is the same rule the Place Tile generator follows before it prints each step 0.8 mm tall, so what you see here is what the tile will show, give or take the border and the name panel.
Questions
Where does the elevation come from?
The USGS 3D Elevation Program (3DEP), the public elevation dataset for the United States. We ask it for a square around your point at 150 by 150 samples, the same request our Place Tile generator makes, only smaller.
Why US places only?
3DEP covers the United States, including Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. We do not use lower resolution world datasets, so a place outside the US gets a polite no for now.
Is this exactly what the tile looks like?
The steps are cut the same way: the height range split into 8 to 14 equal terraces, lakes held flat at their own level. The tile adds a raised border, the name panel and the keyway notch, and it is printed at 0.8 mm a step.
Can I use an address instead of coordinates?
Yes, any US street address with the city and state. It goes to the US Census Bureau geocoder only to find the coordinates. A trailhead or summit with no street address needs coordinates from your map app.
What does the radius change?
How much ground fits on the square. One kilometre around a house shows the street and the nearest hill; ten kilometres shows the valley. The tile is made at 2, 5 or 10 km across.