The following is a hex grid overlayed onto North America.

NA HEXmap portrait 8-28-top.png
NA HEXmap portrait 8-28-bottom.png

(The image is split into two pieces, top and bottom, because of size.)

Here is a much smaller version, in a single piece.
NA HEXmap portrait 8-28-small.png

Map Details
The map is unlabeled and geographic boundaries are unmarked, but the map contains the following features:
  • Urban areas are marked in red.
  • Railroad lines are marked with black.
  • And of course, rivers, lakes and coastlines are marked with blue.

The size of each hex is twelve miles side-to-side. In other words, the apothem of each hex is 6 miles.
(This is a common size of hexgrid that shows up in rpgs and the like.)

The projection is Lambert Conformal Conic, centered on the United States. This projection has two nice properties:
  • It preserves local angles, meaning our hexagons on the map correspond to at least roughly hexagonal regions in the real world.
  • It has relatively little distortion within the 48 states. Near the top and bottom of the map, the hexes are closer to 11 miles than 12, but that's still pretty good as far as these things go.


Data Source and Software
The underlying map data comes from Natural Earth, a collection of public domain vector and raster mapping data.
The hex grid was generated using QGIS, which is open source mapping software.
The styling was also done using QGIS.

But why though?
I wanted to play around with the styling tools of QGIS, and I also wanted to visualize how big a 12-mile hex grid is, using terrain that I'm familiar with.
After I made this, I used it to plan out a rough sketch of a fantasy hex-map by sketching on top of this one.
I can imagine that this map might be useful to other people for similar gaming-related purposes. Feel free to use this however you like.