Today, I decided to create a fairly simple vector map of the United States, because why not? I just felt like doing it. Feel free to backpack and use in your projects. No credit required. If you do use the map, I would be interested to see what you did with it, so let me know. See the Notes and Credits for how I created the map, as well as some things to keep in mind.
To create this map, I got out a map of the contiguous 48 states, and using the Scratch vector editor, I manually traced around every single one of them. I also made sure to carefully edit their boundaries so that they would fit together fairly seamlessly. There are some imperfections if you zoom in enough, but it should be close enough for most purposes. This also means that you can literally take the map apart and the states will still keep their shapes. You can delete states that you don't need, and enlarge the part of the map that you want people to focus on. You can make a map of only the states east of Kansas or you can cut it down to only the five states that border the Gulf of Mexico. You can also make a map showing only the Midwest or a map showing only Texas. Just delete the states you don't need, and there will be no problem. States with multiple polygons, e.g. Michigan and Hawaii, are grouped together for you. All of the states are drawn to scale with each other. For Alaska and Hawaii, I used a separate map for each state, as well as another one showing both of their sizes in comparision with the contiguous states. I took that map and scaled it so that it roughly aligned with the 48 states I had already traced, and then I took the separate maps for Alaska and Hawaii and laid them on top. When the two separate state maps were confirmed to be the correct size relative to the continguous United States, I went ahead and traced both Alaska and Hawaii. To recolor a state, just fill it in. Note that some states have multiple regions that you need to color. On this map, they are Alaska (10 regions), Hawaii (4 regions), Michigan (2 regions), New York (2 regions), and Virginia (2 regions). Some of the smaller features are missing on this map, like coastal islands, small bays, and the entirety of Washington, D.C. Features like these are just too small to draw. Also note that I had to draw three of the islands of Hawaii as a single polygon; filling in Maui also fills in Molokai and Lanai. This is because separate polygons for the two small islands would be impossible to fill in and change color, and so I drew them in the same polygon as Maui in such a way that the final polygon looked natural and not forced. The full map is really only intended for the 50 states. If you want to get a detailed map of a particularly small area (e.g. the Pennsylvania-Delaware border or the coastline of New Hampshire), you will have to draw it yourself. Just get a detailed map of the area and trace it in the vector editor. Scratch On!
