ESRI Resources Under Your Nose

ESRI provides some very useful general GIS datasets with its ArcView 3.2 and ArcGIS 8.2 software which are installed during the general installation process.  As far as I know, all of these data are in geographic coordinates.  Their location will depend on where the person who ran the installer specified the software was to be installed. 

On my machine, the following useful datasets are stored in the directory C:\ESRI\ESRIDATA

\WORLD:

• CITIES - Cities of the world with many of the city's attributes

• CNTRY92 - Country boundaries

• DRAINAGE - Major (really major) drainage basins of the world

• GEOGRID - Major geographic zones

• LAKES - Major (really major) lakes of the world

• LATLNG - Latitude and Longitude lines (5 deg interval)

• RIVERS - Major rivers of the world

• WORLD30 - Latitude and Longitude lines (30 deg interval)

\USA:

• CITIES

• COUNTIES

• DRAINAGE

• LAKES

• PLACES

• ROADS

• STATES

On my machine, the following datasets are in C:\Program Files\arcgis\arcexe82\Reference Systems (but they will probably be directly under C:\ on yours).

• usgs24q - Names and outlines of all USGS 1:24,000 quadrangles

• usgs100q - Names and outlines of all USGS 1:100,000 quadrangles

• usgs250q - Names and outlines of all USGS 1:250,000 quadrangles

• usstpln83 - Names and outlines of all of the state plane zones

• utm - Names and outlines of all of the UTM zones

• World Time Zones