Census Data

The files presented here are based on U.S. Census Bureau Tiger files. The eight counties that surround Lake Tahoe are divided into a numerous Census tracts that include from 2,500 to 8,000 people. They were taken for the SEDAC web site for Census Data download called DDCarto. They were imported into ARC/INFO, combined to cover the Lake Tahoe area, projected into UTM zone 10 NAD27 and converted to Shape and SDTS file formats.

The original boundary files are available from the U.S. Census Bureau at http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/tr.html.

Click here for an interactive Census map of Lake Tahoe vacinity.

Data Download

The following Census data have been mosaicked together from the 18 7.5-minute quadrangles that cover the Lake Tahoe Basin. The mosaicked files are more convenient for looking at areas throughout the basin or areas on the edge of two quadrangles.

Census data are in UTM NAD27 zone 10 projection. Raw (original) data are in the following projections: data east of 120 degrees longitude are in UTM zone 11 and data west of 120 degrees longitude are in UTM zone 10. It is not possible to combine different projections in Geographic Information System (GIS), therefore, all data have been reprojected into one standard projection, UTM NAD27 zone 10 projection, for the Lake Tahoe Basin.

The following Census data are stored in three different file formats, each contain the same information: census_sdts.zip (SDTS format, 299 KB compressed) census_e00.zip (ARC/INFO export format, 482 KB compressed) census_shp.zip (Shapefile format, 575 KB compressed) Metadata The image on the left shows the census tracts bordering Lake Tahoe colored according to their population density.