Looking for the Coords of US Map Boundaries

Question

I am writing a program that needs a list of coordinates for the boundaries of the US. I can only find states individually but not the whole country. This is an example of the boundaries for Alabama.

{"Alabama": [coordinates: [35.0041, -88.1955],
                             coordinates: [34.9918, -85.6068],
                             coordinates: [32.8404, -85.1756],
                             coordinates: [32.2593, -84.8927],
                             coordinates: [32.1535, -85.0342],
                             coordinates: [31.7947, -85.1358],
                             coordinates: [31.5200, -85.0438],
                             coordinates: [31.3384, -85.0836],
                             coordinates: [31.2093, -85.1070],
                             coordinates: [31.0023, -84.9944],
                             coordinates: [30.9953, -87.6009],
                             coordinates: [30.9423, -87.5926],
                             coordinates: [30.8539, -87.6256],
                             coordinates: [30.6745, -87.4072],
                             coordinates: [30.4404, -87.3688],
                             coordinates: [30.1463, -87.5240],
                             coordinates: [30.1546, -88.3864],
                             coordinates: [31.8939, -88.4743],
                             coordinates: [34.8938, -88.1021],
                             coordinates: [34.9479, -88.1721],
                             coordinates: [34.9107, -88.1461] 
                            ] 
                }

Does anyone have a list for the whole country of the US?

If a shapefile is usable, ref. Are there any free administrative boundaries available as shapefiles? — Erica, Dec 03 '14 at 15:11
Tried, the file is not available for download. Also the US Census does not have for the Country just states, counties, and islands. — Greatwon, Dec 03 '14 at 15:21
Guess I Should say I Have the states, only looking for whole country. — Greatwon, Dec 03 '14 at 15:25

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 03 '14 at 19:58

You can download the US country boundary from Natural Earth, load it into QGIS and export it as GeoJson. You might need to simplify the boundary. This approach has the added benefit that you can incrementally adjust the smoothing of the line until you get it down to a manageable number of points.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 09 '14 at 08:19

You could use OpenStreetMap data. There are so-called OSM-poly-files (http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis/Polygon_Filter_File_Format) which describe the extent of the region for the entire US and each federal state: http://download.geofabrik.de/north-america.html respectively http://download.geofabrik.de/north-america.poly

Looking for the Coords of US Map Boundaries

2 Answers2