Quick Tip RE: Topographical Maps

While posting photographs from my visit to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, I wanted to use the actual names of the various locations, buttes, mountains, etc., that appeared in my photographs. There are some that are easy to find on the web simply by searching for the locations where the photographs were taken.
 
However, I had a hard time finding all of the names, especially for the areas on Forest Road 611 which is in the Kaibab National Forest and not part of the Grand Canyon National Park. Searches for the viewpoint I went to out on that dirt road didn't come up with much.
 
I turned my searches to finding topographical maps of the Grand Canyon. I found a decent site with selected maps of the Grand Canyon and other areas called http://www.pickatrail.com/ but it didn't list the Kaibab area north of the park. However, the maps on "pickatrail"are actually United States Geological Survey (USGS) products so I decided to search for "usgs topo maps" and got to their site: http://store.usgs.gov/.

To find a map, I first did a search for "kaibab national forest" and then zoomed in and located the area I wanted (note that this wasn't that easy - it took a while to find Forest Road 611 on the interactive online map).

Screenshot of the USGS website

Once you find an area of interest, choose the "MARK POINTS" radio button left of the interactive map and then click on the map to add a marker.

Options for related maps available

Clicking on the marker brings up a smaller dialog box with options for various maps available for the selected marker.

In my case there were many maps available for download. Apparently some maps cost money but I was able to download the "Dog Point US Topo" 7.5x7.5 GRID map for free. It is actually provided as a ".zip" file so you do need to have the ability to "unzip" the file.

Note that I've downloaded a few of these and they're about 30MB per zip and final, unzipped folder (not a lot of compression apparently). They have quite a bit of detail (the 7.5x7.5 versions).

Once downloaded, I could see that I had captured a photograph of the Saddle Mountain Wilderness area in general, and I found out that, at least according to the USGS, the butte I photographed is nameless. There is a name for the wash, however: "North Canyon Wash". I can also see from the map that I was at roughly 8,850 feet elevation.

North Canyon Wash