Free maps for your Garmin GPS
Free user-generated U.S. and international maps
This was originally intended as a follow up to my international maps
for your Garmin GPS post. Yet those sticking closer to home should investigate this too — the sources below include road maps of U.S. cities and some very nice topo maps of greater detail than you can find elsewhere. The image below is from a 1:24,000 scale Lake Tahoe map.
Besides being free, these maps are often available for areas not covered by Garmin and other commercial providers. Unfortunately though, turn-by-turn routing is less likely to be found with these maps.
One other thing before we get to sources of these maps — they utilize the Garmin .img format, and will require some special techniques for loading them to your unit. More on that below.
Sources of free maps for your Garmin GPS
Here are the best places to start looking for these maps:
- Map Center – Undoubtedly the most comprehensive source of user-generated maps for
Garmin GPS receivers. The screen shots at the top of this post and below show maps of Sydney, Australia that I downloaded and transferred to my nuvi. - Free Garmin maps – Another comprehensive list.
Specifc areas:
- Australia – Tracks 4 Australia
- Canada – Canadian topo maps
- Caribbean – This Caribbean maps site also has maps of Japan, Bermuda and Antarctica
- China – Yunnan Explorer
- Greece – Greece GPS maps
- Morocco –
I highly recommend using MapSet Toolkit with Garmin .img files. It doesn’t upload the file, but lets you add it to MapSource as one of the upload options, so that you can choose it along with other mapsets, and upload it to your Garmin. I did a post on it not too long ago:
http://freegeographytools.com/2007/adding-garmin-img-files-to-mapsource
Thanks Leszek. Love your site. Keep up the great work!
Hi, I am trying to upload some .IMG file to my Garmin Mobile XP but I can not. I did alll hte IMG2GPS procedure but nothing, any idea that could help???
Thanks,
Ibrahim
Ibrahim,
I did a quick search and found a couple of references that might help…
http://www.imserba.com/forum/showthread.php?t=113040
http://uud.info/en/support/mobilext/
Equipos de GPS y Rastreo Satelital – Argentina
Hi,
there’s another website which gathered basically all maps for Garmin GPS which are available for free on the Internet:
http://www.mapsntrails.com/?q=en
Greetings
Thanks a million for this site! I am buying my first GPS device ever and this was a great help. Since I plan to use it extensively in a car and for hiking around South America and Africa, I will need to get some of these free maps.
Does anyone by any chance know whether I will be able to use my Apple computer (a MacBook Pro) to put these free maps into MapSource for subsequent uploading to my Garmin device?
Many of these maps come in a Mac version. I’m not sure how to install them if they don’t, but I bet the folks at http://forums.gpsfiledepot.com/ can help.
Better take another look at OpenStreetMap.org!
The OSM maps of Europe are some of the best available, especially in England and Germany.
There are maps available of the whole world in Garmin format generated from the OpenStreetMap database. You pick what areas you want, then download an executable install of the maps for Mapsource. Check it out here: http://garmin.na1400.info/routable.php
YOU can also update the maps, so we will see continuous improvement in these maps. That also means that YOU can track your routes and update the map, then upload a new map with your changes few weeks later.
I agree, they’ve made huge progress. Time to do another post!
Hi there
I need syria and lebanon detail map for my garmin 60 cx series.and also how can i use this map.I only use map source on my gps but it is not accurated.
Thanks
http://downloads.cloudmade.com/asia#breadcrumbs
http://mapcenter2.cgpsmapper.com/catalogue.php
I’m not sure what you mean about using MapSource and it not being accurate.
hy guys….can anyone tell me haw to upload the maps on my garmin nuvi..i need europe map….tks
This process will work with OSM maps from http://downloads.cloudmade.com/:
How do I transfer the .img file to my Garmin GPS?
This is easiest where your GPS unit can be put into “USB mass storage” mode, or where you are using a removable micro-SD card. In both cases the .img file needs to be renamed to ‘gmapsupp.img’ and put in the ‘Garmin’ subfolder.
If you can’t access the GPS memory like this, then sendMap can be downloaded from cGPSmapper and can transfer .img files over both serial and usb connections.
The Garmin maps look a bit funny. Why?
The .img files from downloads.cloudmade.com are our “OpenStreetMap Error Edition”. These are intended to help OSM volunteers when they are out mapping, and so highlight roads that are missing names and other features that may be of interest only to mappers. If you’re not helping out with OSM then it may look a little confusing!
(from http://www.cloudmade.com/faq#downloads )