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County Seats (1M scale), Wisconsin 2021
- Identification Information
- Spatial Reference Information
- Data Quality Information
- Distribution Information
- Spatial Representation Information
- Metadata Reference Information
Identification Information
- Citation
- Title
- County Seats (1M scale), Wisconsin 2021
- Originator
- Wisconsin State Cartographer's Office
- Creation Date
- 2021-06-24
- Edition
- 2021
- Geospatial Data Presentation Form
- mapDigital
- Collection Title
- Statewide
- Abstract
- This point data layer represents the location of county seats in Wisconsin. [In the United States, a county seat is considered the administrative center for county units of government. This dataset is intended for the cartographic portrayal of Wisconsin county seats at a scale of a 1:1,000,000 or more. As such, it is not intended to represent the specific locations of county courthouses or any other county government facilities. From Wikipedia (accessed June 24, 2021): "The city, town, or populated place that houses county government is known as the seat of its respective county. Generally, the county legislature, county courthouse, sheriff's department headquarters, hall of records, jail and correctional facility are located in the county seat, though some functions (such as highway maintenance, which usually requires a large garage for vehicles, along with asphalt and salt storage facilities) may also be located or conducted in other parts of the county, especially if it is geographically large." In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Blue Book: https://legis.wisconsin.gov/LRB/blue-book/ is the authoritative source of county seat information.Most county seats in Wisconsin are located in incorporated cities, towns, or villages. There are exceptions. For example, the Menominee County seat is Keshena, an unincorporated Census Designated Place (CDP). In situations where the county seat is a large civil town, the county seat point is placed at the approximate location of the county courthouse. In Burnett County, the county seat is often incorrectly listed as Siren. In fact, the county seat is the Town of Meenon. The confusion results from the county courthouse having a Siren postal address.This dataset was originally derived from the March 2021 Legislative Technology Services Bureau "Cities, Towns, and Villages" geospatial data layer. A list of county seats created by the State Cartographer's Office was joined to the LTSB polygon boundary data, and then converted into points. For full processing details, see the lineage section of this metadata.To ensure the accuracy of this dataset, the individual records were validated against the Wisconsin Blue Book on June 24, 2021.]
- Purpose
- This data is intended for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production, or to provide a basemap to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data. [This dataset is a cartographic portrayal of county seats in Wisconsin. It is designed for small-scale mapping only, and is not intended to represent the specific locations of county courthouses or other government facilities.]
- Supplemental Information
- This is an archived copy of the data held at UW-Madison.
- Temporal Extent
- Time Instant
- 2021-06-24T00:00:00
- Bounding Box
- West
- -92.808302
- East
- -87.283661
- North
- 46.74079
- South
- 42.572214
- ISO Topic Category
- location
- Place Keyword
-
Wisconsin
- Place Keyword Thesaurus
- Theme Keyword
-
County seats
- Theme Keyword Thesaurus
- LCSH
- Theme Keyword
-
Cities and towns
- Theme Keyword Thesaurus
- LCSH
- Resource Constraints
- Use Limitation
- This dataset is intended for small-scale mapping only, at scales of approximately 1:1,000,000 and above.
- Legal Constraints
- Use Limitation
- Although this data is being distributed by the University of Wisconsin-Madison, no warranty expressed or implied is made by the University as to the accuracy of the data and related materials. The act of distribution shall not constitute any such warranty, and no responsibility is assumed by the University in the use of this data, or related materials.
- Maintenance and Update Frequency
- asNeeded
- Language
- eng
- Credit
- Wisconsin State Cartographer's Office, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Point of Contact
- Contact
- Jim Lacy
- Position Name
- Associate State Cartographer
- Delivery Point
- 550 North Park Street
- City
- Madison
- Administrative Area
- WI
- Postal Code
- 53706
- lacy@wisc.edu
- Phone
- (608) 262-6850
Spatial Reference Information
- Reference System Identifier
- Code
- 3071
- Code Space
- EPSG
- Version
- 6.13(9.2.0)
Data Quality Information
- Quantitative Attribute Accuracy Report
- Lineage
- Statement
- This dataset was originally generated from a polygon layer representing Wisconsin cities, towns, and villages. The March 2021 "WI Cities, Towns, Villages" shapefile was downloaded from the Wisconsin Legislative Technology Services Bureau (LTSB) Open Data site on June 23, 2021. The LTSB data was joined to a county seats table created by the State Cartographer's Office using the COUSUBFP identifier. Polygon features were converted to points, and these points were further edited and moved as needed to ensure an accurate cartographic portrayal of county seat locations. For example, some polygon centroids would place the county seat point in a river, lake, or rural area with little to no development. These points were moved to more logical locations that were judged to provide the best possible cartographic representation. In other situations (Burnett County, Florence County) the designated county seat is a large, mostly rural civil town. In these cases, the county seat point was moved to the approximate location of the county courthouse. The county seat of Menominee County was manually placed mid-way between the main Menominee County administrative offices, and the tribal offices of the Menominee Nation. This was done in order to recognize a unique situation where the county and tribal boundaries are conterminous.
- Process Step
- Description
- Provided access via GeoData@Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- Process Date
- 2021-06-24T00:00:00
Distribution Information
- Format Name
- Esri Shapefile
- Format Version
- 1.0
- Distributor
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Online Access
- https://gisdata.wisc.edu/public/WI_County_Seats_1M_2021.zip
- Protocol
- WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download
- Name
- GeoData@Wisconsin
- Function
- download
Spatial Representation Information
- Vector
- Topology Level
- geometryOnly
- Vector Object Type
- point
- Vector Object Count
- 72
Metadata Reference Information
- Hierarchy Level
- dataset
- Metadata File Identifier
- 5C6BB752-A050-48F0-8DD7-0FB3958448E8
- Metadata Point of Contact
- Name
- Arthur H. Robinson Map Library
- Delivery Point
- 550 N. Park St
- City
- Madison
- Administrative Area
- WI
- Postal Code
- 53706
- Country
- US
- askmap@library.wisc.edu
- Phone
- 608-262-1471
- Metadata Date Stamp
- 2021-06-24
- Metadata Standard Name
- ISO 19139 Geographic Information - Metadata - Implementation Specification
- Metadata Standard Version
- 2007
- Character Set
- utf8