Great Lakes polygon shapefile

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06-05-2012 10:07 AM
JuliaSmith
New Contributor
I have searched high and low and I cannot find a Great Lakes polygon shapefile anywhere. All I have found available online are the polyline boundaries of the lakes and they are too complex to be converted to a polygon. I can't seem to download them from the USGS Seamless Viewer. I tried to extract them from the template maps provided in ArcMap but I can't seem to do that, either. Does anyone have any idea where I might find these shapefiles? I appreciate any assistance!
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4 Replies
MarcinGasior
Occasional Contributor III
Look at Esti Data & Maps and StreetMap USA DVD.
There's Lakes layer (with .sdc extension) in folder ...\usa\hydro

You can also download Lakes from http://www.naturalearthdata.com/downloads/10m-physical-vectors/ with better data accuracy than Esri data.
NathanWorkman
New Contributor

Thank you for the tip about the Natural Earth website (Natural Earth )!

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TaylerSchweigel
New Contributor

This site has Great Lakes and GL Watershed shapefiles
Great Lakes and Watersheds Shapefiles - ScienceBase-Catalog 

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KirillShrayber
New Contributor

Here is the FREE downloadable archive (we drawn)  

This is the full map (shapefiles in zip archive) of the GREAT LAKES – US and CA
Water File – Lakes and Rivers (polygons) – 2020
List of the files in this archive:

  1. great_lakes_us_ca.prj
  2. great_lakes_us_ca.cpg
  3. great_lakes_us_ca.dbf
  4. great_lakes_us_ca.shp
  5. great_lakes_us_ca.shx

Great Lakes Shapefile (free download) = 64 MB ZIP

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