Editorial policy .
How USA State Maps selects geographic sources, labels map dates and scales, and reviews corrections to its state maps.
Source selection
Our state and county maps are derived from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2025 Cartographic Boundary Files . The Census Bureau publishes these files for mapping and geographic reference. We use the national 1:5,000,000-scale state and county KML files so the pages follow one consistent source and vintage. State pages identify that source and link to the official download page.
What we change
We transform the source coordinates into SVG drawings, choose line and fill styles, and offer one file with county-level divisions and one without them. Alaska and Hawaii are shown separately on the national overview to keep their outlines readable. The site does not add inferred boundaries or label county shapes from memory. Where a state page shows land and water area, the numbers are converted from the Census file’s square-meter attributes and rounded to whole square miles.
Dates and scale
The year “2025” identifies the vintage of the cartographic boundary dataset, not a promise that the map reflects every later local change. The 1:5,000,000 scale describes a generalized national file. Small islands, bends in a river, and other fine detail may be simplified. Readers should use a larger-scale official dataset for detailed analysis and a legal or surveying source for property questions.
Corrections
We review reports of broken downloads, incorrect state labels, source attribution problems, and rendering issues. To report a problem, email info@admk.com with the page address and what you observed. Where a map differs from its cited source because of our processing, we aim to correct the derived file and update the relevant page. Where the underlying source itself needs correction, we direct readers to the Census Bureau or the appropriate local mapping authority.
Names and figures on state pages
The alphabetical division names come from the name field in the matching 2025 county-level KML file. A count on a state page is the number of those source records assigned to that state. Land and water figures are derived from the published area attributes and rounded to the nearest square mile. Water share and land area rank are calculations from the same attributes; rank compares the 50 states and excludes Washington, D.C. These figures describe the source file, not a new survey or a current estimate.
Limits of the finished images
An SVG can be enlarged without blurring, but that does not undo the simplification already present in the 1:5,000,000 source. The PNG downloads are raster copies of the SVG drawings at a fixed size and contain the same geographic information. State maps are fitted individually to their image frame, so a large state and a small state can appear similarly sized on separate pages. The national overview uses one scale for the contiguous states and separate insets for Alaska and Hawaii.