Using the Recreation Compass

The Recreation Compass uses data layers that allow you to find information about various state and federal recreation areas such as lakes and rivers, national forests, state parks, and more.

Basic operation

You can explore the map using the interface icons or do a specific place search. See the instructions below.

Interface icons

To use the interface icons -

	Reset - Clicking on the icon resets the Recreation Compass to show the entire state.
	Zoom in - Clicking the icon increases the magnification of a specific area of the map. Use the Reposition tool to move to another area.
	Reposition - This icon is chosen by default and allows you to move to a different area of the map. Either hold down your mouse to drag the large map to a new position, or click on the smaller map (located in the lower right of the compass) to move to a specific area of the state.
	Zoom out - Clicking the icon decreases the magnification of the map.
	Get information - Click this icon to activate it, then click on a specific point of interest. Feature information will appear in a new browser window. Note: Not all sections of the map have information. In this case, you will receive a "search failed" message.

Place searches

Use the Place input box to quickly display a specific location:

• By name: Enter the name or partial name of a of a point of interest (i.e., lake, city, WMA)
• By type: Select one of the options from the drop-down menu to narrow your search (e.g., name = Turtle / type = lake)
• By public land survey (PLS): Enter the township, range and, optionally, the section you'd like to display - format is TxxxRxxSx (e.g., T137R44 or T137R44S5)
• By coordinate: Enter an x y pair, separated by a space - supported coordinate types are UTM (zone 15, nad83) and lon/lat

After you have entered your information, click on the button. If your search terms match only one item exactly, the map will automatically zoom to that place. Otherwise, a small popup window will show you matches and you can zoom to a place by clicking on a name.

A place search will return up to 1000 matching results.

Tips

• To zoom to a specific area, press the shift key and drag a box to cover that area
• If you have a scroll wheel on your mouse, you can move it up and down to zoom in and out
• Place by name search tips:
  • Put a ^ before a search term to ensure that it occurs at the beginning of a name (e.g., "^paul" will find Paul and exclude Saint Paul)
  • Put a $ after a search term to ensure that it occurs at the end of a name (e.g., "paul$" will find Saint Paul and exclude Pauline)
  • Put a ^ before and a $ after the search term for an exact match (e.g., "^Saint Paul$" will find Saint Paul only)
• To get a list of all matches for a given type set the type without a search term (e.g. city will return a link to all cities on the map)
• Use the download map link (above the legend) to download a high quality version of your map

About the Compass Data

The Recreation Compass is based on DNR core GIS (Geographic Information System) data holdings. For more information including metadata and direct access to much of the raw GIS data please visit our Data Deli.

Credits

The Recreation Compass was developed by the Minnesota DNR using MapServer, OpenLayers and TileCache. Questions and comments are welcomed.