California Atlas & Gazetteer (Delorme Atlas & Gazetteer Series) Paperback – May 15, 2011 Author: DeLorme | Language: English | ISBN:
0899333834 | Format: PDF, EPUB
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- Series: Delorme Atlas & Gazetteer Series
- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: DeLorme Publishing; 3rd edition (May 15, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0899333834
- ISBN-13: 978-0899333830
- Product Dimensions: 15.5 x 11 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
At first blush this Atlas looks authoritative and promising but it does not bear looking at closely. It is riddled with mistakes. I am an ex-cartographer with many years of experience in the field. I am also a map collector. And I also prefer maps to GPS devices. I find them to be much more fun. But there is no fun in this atlas. I have lived in California all my life and know Southern California like the back of my hand. Though I am not sure what primary sources were used in the making of this atlas, I strongly suspect that Delorme got into trouble using outdated USGS maps.
They also made some very bad decisions in their cartography. For example, they show, in the many urban areas of the map, a myriad of lines spider-webbing all over the place. These are unnamed roads which do the user absolutely no good whatsoever without the names. They clog up the map terribly and Delorme should have forgone this vanity and, instead, shown less roads but named the ones they showed. This is an unforgivable flaw in this atlas. Furthermore, very important information is not shown at all: the full course of a very important road (especially to tourists)--Mulholland Drive--is not shown. A very popular tourist destination and Los Angeles County Park, Devil's Punchbowl, is omitted entirely. Utterly useless place names that haven't been in use in two generations pop up on this map in great abundance adding to the systematic disinformation this shabby product provides. The mistakes are legion--too many to list here. But, to demonstrate their cavalier attitude toward accuracy, I will point out that they have completely omitted an entire intersection on Interstate 15 in the Temecula Valley: Indian Truck Trail.
How can anybody give this product a 5-star rating?? Being a European I ordered this atlas before I went to California, and it looked great at first sight - the only obvious fault was the binding that did not allow it to be put flat on the table when opened. The only acceptable binding for a road atlas is a spiral spine that allows it to open fully and even be turned "inside out" so you can view one page only. This DeLorme atlas is not user friendly - my wife held it on her knees while I was driving, and the binding made it close itself as soon as she took her hands off the book. Moreover the binding soon proved to be of very poor quality as the pages started to fall out after only 4 days, and that was not due to any abuse from us. As tourists we wanted to use minor roads as well as freeways, and we soon got into trouble. The roads listed as Major Connectors or Major Streets in the legend can be anything from paved 4-lane roads in suburbs to the worst gravel roads only accessible by 4-WDs. One example - the "major connector" leading from Rimrock (page 143 B8) up to State Route 18 near Big Bear City should not be attempted by anything else than a high clearance 4wd with an experienced driver at the wheel. How can DeLorme call this dirt track a major connector?? Inaccurate or misleading information was found in many places, for instance a place called Bagdad (page 132 D4). This place is marked as "City or Town" according to the legend, but not a single house was to be seen there. And that was not the only non-existing "town" in that area. Many places of great interest for the tourist were not specially marked, for instance Calico, one of the best preserved ghost towns in California, is only marked as a town and not as a place of interest.
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