I have been working to make the Minnesota Cache Reviewer’s (Surfer Joe) job of making certain caches are placed legally a lot easier by offering up freely available park boundary information in KMZ format for use with Google Earth. This way, if a geocache is submitted in an area that it is either banned (National Wildlife Refuge, AMA, WPA, etc) or in an area that requires permission (State Forests and State Parks), all the work is already done and “Surfer Joe” will know immediately without consulting various maps and doing too much guess work.

GIS departments around the country utilize ArcView to create boundaries and other GIS data information and usually release it in Shape format which w/o ArcView is fairly useless. I have talked about how I have converted SHP to KML/KMZ before but this time I’ve got a ton more content available for download.

If you’re at all interested in knowing boundaries of Aquatic Management Areas (fishing), State Forests and Parks, National Wildlife Refuges, or Waterfowl Production Areas (there’s a beautiful WPA in Lakeville) check out the following KMZ files:

Minnesota DNR Boundaries in KMZ

Related posts:

1. Points on KML/KMZ Polygons Created From Shape Files
2. Geocaching Permitted in Minnesota State Parks!
3. A Missile Silo a Tourist Attraction? I’d like to see it!
4. Burnsville Center Plans to Attract RNC Attendees
5. Minnesota County KMZ Overlay for Google Maps