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Click here  to learn about  TerraAtlas™ -- The Collection!

TerraAtlas™ is a collection of atlases of high quality aerial photography that features selected venues from the American landscape. 

The first title in this collection to be released is TerraAtlas: Central Washington, DC, an aerial photographic atlas of the administrative, historical, intellectual, and emotional heart of our nation’s capital and the adjoining part of Arlington County, Virginia. Among the architectural landmarks and other special places featured in this atlas are the major buildings of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the federal government; the National Mall and the museums of the Smithsonian Institution; Washington’s administrative, financial, and commercial districts; Rock Creek Park and the National Zoo; the Potomac and Anacostia rivers and their bordering waterfronts; Arlington National Cemetery; most embassies of other nations; historic Georgetown; and numerous residential neighborhoods scattered throughout the covered area. Vividly depicted in this atlas are the impressive patterns of content, function, color, and texture that characterize the dynamic and varied urban landscape of Washington and Arlington, an area that has been unified at one level by its more than two centuries of tenure as our national capital, and at another by the parklike veneer of vegetation that makes this one of America’s greener urban areas.

TerraAtlas: Central Washington, DC incorporates an area 5.68 miles north-south and 5.08 miles east-west, or some 28.84 square miles, in Washington, DC, and Arlington County, Virginia. The aerial photography reproduced in this atlas was taken in 2002 by the US Geological Survey.  The atlas includes 35 pages of photographs presented at a scale of 1:7000, each titled with the name of a prominent neighborhood or landscape feature located on the page. A grid divides each of these 35 images into 72 cells; each cell measures 0.1 mile on a side and is uniquely identifiable by a letter and number located on the left and bottom side of the grid, respectively.

The atlas concludes with nine pages of indexes, of which four pages are devoted to street names and five pages to selected other place names. Place names, other than streets, included in this atlas are representative of categories of places that appear on the images.  Generally, the places listed include those of historical, cultural, and natural significance; international, national, state, district, and local government properties; educational institutions; and more prominent hospitals, hotels and motels, and religious sites.

REVIEWS

...the real fun of a book like this is to study how your city looks from the air. Little details are particularly striking - trains pulling in and out of Union Station, a boat speeding down the Potomac, the shadows of trees along the shore reflected in the water. The aerial perspective gives a hint of how birds see the city, and why certain areas are so good for birdwatching. The southern part of Rock Creek Park appears as a solid mass of trees in between equally solid masses of concrete. With Roosevelt Island, the contrast between the park and its surroundings is even more vivid.... TerraAtlas: Central Washington, DC, is well-suited for local residents who want to learn more about topography of the city where they live and work, and for visitors from out of town who have an interest in the Washington landscape.

         --John Beetham, ADC Birding Blog Review                                                                     (www.dendroica.blogspot.com/2006/10/review-terraatlas-central-washington.html), September 2006.

Deftly compiled by Naphtali David Rishe, TerraAtlas: Central Washington, DC, is an expansive aerial photographic mapping of the central Washington, DC, and Arlington, Virginia, areas. Comprising a concise, visually informative, superbly executive photographic atlas complete with map-style scale measurement indicators, a street index, points of interest index that serves as an easily accessible landmark locator, TerraAtlas offers readers a "user friendly" visual guide from an overhead perspective. TerraAtlas: Central Washington, DC, is very highly recommended as the ideal atlas for the Washington, DC, and Arlington, Virginia, areas -- and would serve as an excellent template for overhead photographic mapping reference books for other major American cityscapes as well.

 — James A. Cox, Editor-in-Chief, Mid-West Book Review, Oregon, WI, Small Press Bookwatch,  July 2006