The U.S. is often thought of as a nation connected by roads—since the 1960s the Interstate Highway has defined American culture and led to untold economic prosperity. But a new map of the nation’s rivers tells a very different story.
The map of all the nation’s rivers and waterways was constructed by California-based software engineer Nelson Minar, who mined information from the National Hydography Dataset and plotted the data using GIS mapping software.
The result is a meticulous and breath-taking picture of the U.S. that resembles a close-up of a leaf, with veins stretching out from the center to the tips of the blades.
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