Printable 1:24000 topographic maps for the entire US
natgeomaps.com
natgeomaps.com
As a result, whenever I go to another country the first thing I do is to try and find some decent maps of the area. With, you know, contours on them. It can be surprisingly hard.
I was so, so glad to find this.
http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
It's an agglomeration of most maps that are available -- you can pick the area, and then see a giant list of the types of maps that cover those coordinates. From topo maps to high resolution aerial photographs, to solar irradiance, to rainfall -- all types of interesting materials.
There are a lot of different overlays as well as older versions available. I especially recommend the 'Dufour Map' and the 'Siegfried Map' from the 19th century, the earliest official maps of the country.
It's in French, unfortunately for the Anglophone world, but they also have aerial maps dating back to the 30s under the advanced explorer.
Now, if only they had a mobile app...
streetmap.co.uk works everywhere, though, if you can stand the old-school interface:
https://mapy.cz/turisticka?x=14.1802678&y=49.9386049&z=14&so...
They have coverage of the whole Europe and an app with offline maps. They also have other map layers - Summer/Winter tourism, roadmap, physical, 19th century and one that can be printed for blind people.
If you want an online map, MapZen recently produced a really excellent outdoor map style. No contours, but really beautiful relief shading and an emphasis on hiking trails, parks, etc. It's based on open data including OpenStreetmap, SRTM, and a lot of other sources. https://mapzen.com/blog/walkabout/
It probably falls under something akin to fair use. NatGeo is likely using a lot of USGS geo data, but doing additional work on top, adding in trails, making the map nice, etc.
I tried to make my own maps once for my GPS unit, it gave me a new level of respect for mapmakers. It's not terribly hard to take the raw LIDAR survey data and make crude maps, but making a nice polished zoomable map with trails, POI's, etc is laborious.
It was even more laborious before computers were involved in cartography. My first employer was full of old timers who manually carved contour lines and maintained trig stations.
In the past I have ordered topographic maps from Raven Maps and they really are excellent. Not cheap, but you can get plain paper suitable for framing or laminated if you want to write on them with whiteboard markers. I have a giant one of the USA, plus a few of states I've lived in.
No affiliation with the company except as a customer. http://www.ravenmaps.com/
https://imgur.com/a/fMy19 is the finished product; http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1524543 are the files I generated and used. They aren't truly accurate maps -- they do have the elevation exaggerated to be more visually interesting, but it's consistently scaled. Some people have gone on to print them w/ 3d printers (rumor is they're on the wall at Makerbot now).
If you made a globe with a 1 foot diameter, Mt. Everest should then be on about 0.2 millimeters above the surface (if you choose to represent sea level as the surface).
Edit: this problem is less dramatic if you make either models either of local regions, or extremely large models (because relative to the size of a region like the Bay Area, the highest elevations in the region are fairly high).
I have a wooden topographical map made with a 3D CNC cut of the SF Bay Area hanging on my wall. It's about 18x18 inches and almost 2 inches deep out of a single piece of almost 2 inch thick piece of plywood. The part I like the most is that the layers in the plywood reveal an automatic topographical map visualization. Got it from here if curious: http://3dwoodenmap.com/
It's quite fascinating to get a refresher of what it looked like in the past.
It's a nice concept. I like being able to see this stuff.
I'd love to pair that up with OSM to make a few nice 3D maps.