Central MA hiking USA

KatyaMaiser

Hello there, new to this community.  I'm an avid hiker and live in central MA.  There is a severe shortage of data on hiking trails in Central Massachusetts USA and I'd like to fix that.  I have found so many trails that are part of this land protection organization, or that one, this state forest, or that one, and most printed guides promote this area but then list things that are over an hours drive away and not at all in Central MA.  Starting my journey to figure this out.  

 

Areas I seek to cover:  From I-495 to Quabbin Reservoir, Worcester, Leominster, Sturbridge, Quabbin Reservior and Mt Wachusett region.  

jcarlson

Another useful thing in this endeavor might be OpenStreetMap. You'll often find dedicated individuals such as yourself who take it upon themselves to map out their local region, and many cases do it in astounding detail. Though OSM has its drawbacks, there are places where its data is the most accurate and authoritative you could hope for.

Check out Overpass Turbo to query the OSM dataset directly, and you can see the existing paths and footways in the area you're interested in. What's more, Esri has a Living Atlas Feature Layer of OSM Highways, which includes paths, footways, cycleways, etc.

Here's a map filtered down to the non-motorized highway features. You can see that certain areas already have a great amount of detail, including surface type. Esri's feature layer updates about every ten minutes or so. As you edit OSM and add paths, you'll see them in this layer very quickly, but already converted to a more Esri-friendly format for use in desktop and web mapping tools.

Bonus Points: If you have an account with Strava, they've given explicit permission to use their public "heatmap" to help identify and digitize features in OSM.