Topographic Maps of the Asheville area

There is a very interesting article by Allan Struthers in Mathematica in Education and Research, Vol 5, No 1 which describes how to download topographic data from the United States Geological Survey and render it with Mathematica. The article and code may be fetched from the author's homepage.

The information is stored in a one-degree digital elevation model (DEM). These consist of a 1200 by 1200 array of equally spaced elevation measurements for each one-degree latitude by one-degree longitude block in the contiguous US. Asheville is located at approximately 35 degrees and 36 minutes north by 82 degrees and 33 minutes west. The DEM containing this region is called "knoxville-e". We can download this DEM and execute the following commands to get our topo map. (The crop command is defined in Struther's article.)

AshevilleData = crop["knoxville-e", {500,700}, {560,760}];
ListContourPlot[AshevilleData, 
	AspectRatio -> 1/Cos[35 Pi/180], Frame -> False]

Note that we can see the French Broad River running from North to South along the west side of town and the hills of Town Mountain to the East. The hill to the North of town is where UNCA is located.

Here is a topo map of nearby Mount Mitchell, the highest point in the eastern United States.

MtMitchellData = crop["knoxville-e", {{850, 890}, {910, 950}}];
ListContourPlot[MtMitchellData, 
	AspectRatio -> 1/Cos[35 Pi/180], Frame -> False]