U. S. Geological Survey maps serve a number of purposes. If one can spot a location on a quadrangle its not too tough to use a straight edge to get to the cordinates yourself plus/minus a few "seconds" or two, thus eliminating the need to buy a GPS for a one time use. Although these GPS things aren't cheap, they are coming down all the time. I think the last one I saw was couple hundred bucks. I plotted coordinates off of a quadrangle recently and put them on an inventory of a "thought"-lost cemetery. Doing this has a couple of advantages. First, John Doe Road and Richard Roe Street may not even be there a hundred years from now. With "conventional" directions that future seeker is out of luck. But unless somebody explodes the planet, those coordinates will always be the same and with a GPS one can walk straight to the spot a thousand years from now. Second, one can be dealing with a landowner who is slightly anxious about "publicity" and anticipates a bunch of amateur and/or destructive genealogists showing up the next day (this rarely happens but its always an apprehension for this type landowner even if you gave 'em a holy writ). The landowner doesn't want the publicity and you don't want to inventory a cemetery and not provide a location. So, just list the coordinates......99% of the "casual" genealogists around won't have the foggiest notion what that string of numbers even is. But a "pro", whom we all like to presume will treat the land and the landowner with a degree of respect, will read those numbers in a heartbeat. With quadrangle in hand he or she will be right on the money in a few minutes. My question: several of the previous posts have referred to "geodetic" maps and the implication given is that they are much more detailed than geological survey quadrangles. I have always thought the geodetics were very large scale and made only for dialing in or out the curvature of the earth. Is "geodetic" just another name some are using for the same quadrangles or is there a better source I've been missing here? Thanks, John M. Poythress