GISuser Guide to downloading Free GNIS US Place Name data
Written by GISuser
Sunday, 29 February 2004
The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the USGS in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), contains information about almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and its territories.
The Federally recognized name of each feature described in the data base is identified, and references are made to a feature's location by State, county, and geographic coordinates. Please note, many of these files are quite large. We suggest you consult the Read-Me file for complete description of the file structure and data fields.
To access and download Geographic Names Files, please select a State on the map below.
Note: The image used to create this map was provided by the USGS
Contents:(description of attributes) State Alpha Code Feature Name Feature Type County Name State Number Code (FIPS Code) County Number Code (FIPS Code) Primary Latitude (DMS) Primary Longitude (DMS) Primary Latitude (decimal degrees) Primary Longitude (decimal degrees) Source Latitude (DMS) Source Longitude (DMS) Source Latitude (decimal degrees) Source Longitude (decimal degrees) Elevation Estimated Population Federal Status Cell Name
These data are stored in ASCII txt format and are easily read into most common programs (Excel, DBase etc...). Some skill will be requied in order to read into your GIS program for use, however, the "savy" user should have little or no problem.
For additional pointers to place name data and online gazetteers see this directory
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The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS), developed by the USGS in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names (BGN), contains information about almost 2 million physical and cultural geographic features in the United States and its territories.
The Federally recognized name of each feature described in the data base is identified, and references are made to a feature's location by State, county, and geographic coordinates. Please note, many of these files are quite large. We suggest you consult the 
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