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Title:

Geographic Names Information System (GNIS)

Source:

U.S. Geological Survey

Description:

The GNIS is a data system developed by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the U.S. Board on Geographic Names. The GNIS is composed of three data bases: the National Geographic Names Data Base, the National Topographic Map Names Data Base, and the Reference Data Base. Each data base provides different, but related, information about the names in the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the territories and outlying areas of the United States.

GNIS contain name information for known places, features, and areas in the United States that are identified by proper names. Each entry (record) can contain up to 17 descriptive fields although not all fields contain data. These fields include feature name, feature type, geographic coordinates, elevation, county, state, topographic map name. A list of the features (e.g. beach, church, dam, forest, lake, mine, stream, etc.) is available as Appendix B in the Users Guide.

This data base in on a CD-ROM and requires a PC running MS DOS version 3.0 or higher. The data retrieval software is on the CD-ROM. Data from the CD-ROM can be selected and saved as ascii text files.