What is Map Michigan?

Map Michigan offers a variety of geographic search options. Information to be displayed ranges from specified addresses, planning a route, street intersections, coordinates, zip codes, points of interest and specialized maps. Points of Interest maps are user-specified features, such as business services, education locations, governmental facilities, travel and recreation locations, and more. Specialized maps consist of items such as schools, boat launches and waterfalls. In addition, Map Michigan also allows one to identify a chosen location on the map and receive information about that location, such as who the legislative representatives are, as well as a link to the representatives home web page.

What can I do if I have problems locating an address?

If the address to be located does not find a location, please check the information entered in the Address Search screen and try again. If there is not a match again, eliminate some of the information placed in the address search screen. For example, eliminate the city and/or the street type. If this is still not working, eliminate everything except the address number and the street name. If a search is performed with just the address number and street name, there will be many options to choose from. Search through the options that are received

How do I select multiple destinations for my trip plan?

At this time, Map Michigan only allows one to create a route between two physical addresses within the state of Michigan - a starting point and an ending point. The Center for Geographic Information is working to enhance the routing service to include multiple destination functionality.

What points of interest are included in Map Michigan?

Map Michigan currently has over 36,000 points of interest categorized within business services; education and career development; family health and safety; licensing certification and permits; government facilities; and travel and recreation. Individual or multiple points of interest layers can be activated by the user and graphically displayed. The Center for Geographic Information is working to enhance the Points of Interest functionality so a user might find a single point of interest by text search. Points of interest from the private sector are not necessarily listed in their entirety.

What is a "Coordinate"?

Coordinates are two lines crossing on a two dimensional map. Where they cross is the location of the point you are interested in -- the campsite, the waterfall, or you, yourself. Most maps have a grid of some kind marked on them. Probably the most common is the degrees of Latitude and Longitude. The Equator is the base line for Latitude and the numbers go south and north from there. The Latitude lines are parallels, meaning they are equidistant apart all the way around the earth. The Longitude lines, the meridian lines, are a bit different, though, because they all cross at the poles. The base line for Longitude runs through a little town in England called Greenwich (pronounced there as "GREN-itch"), heads towards each geographic pole (not the magnetic poles), and then around to meet on the opposite side of the earth from Greenwich. Now you have two lines circling the earth, the base line for Latitude (the equator), and the baseline for Longitude (the prime meridian), and they cross at two points on each line.

Degrees/Minutes/Seconds

The most popular system is the one that shows standard Degrees/Minutes/Seconds coordinates. An example is: N61° 11' 05.5" W130° 30' 10.0"
The N61 is the number of degrees of North Latitude. The degrees start at zero, which is the Earth's equator. In this case the N61° line is just above the British Columbia provincial border. The 11' is the number of minutes (' = minute) north of that. A minute is 1/60th of a degree. The 05.5" is the number of seconds (" = second) north of 11 minutes. A second, like on a clock, is 1/60th of a minute. The same thing works for the West Longitude part of the coordinate. The North Latitude part of the coordinate indicates a line that runs around the whole earth at a given distance above (north of) the equator. The West Longitude part of the coordinate indicates a line a given distance west of the line running north and south through Greenwich, England. Because the Latitude lines are parallel we can assign a given number of feet or meters for each degree, or minute, or second of distance. That doesn't work for Longitude, though, because the lines keep getting closer together the closer to the poles you get. Really makes navigation difficult for us who like tidy maps.

Decimal Degree/Minutes

Another popular system is the one that is the standard that many governments have set between themselves for handling coordinate data. It also seems to be used by at least some GPS receiver manufacturers for handling data within their units. Everything is converted to the requested coordinate system for presentation on the GPS screen. There are probably several different names for it. A coordinate looks like this: N61° 11.0924' W130° 30.1660'