TIGER (Topologically Integrated Geographic Encoding and Referencing system)

TIGER/Line 2009 Continental United States

This listing is for COUNTY based TIGER/Line 2009 shapefiles.

To see the differences between National, State, & County based TIGER/Line data, visit this support table.

This is a US Census TIGER/Line 2009 dataset. A high level overview of the data is presented here including links to detailed technical documentation.

TIGER/Line is a format used by the United States Census Bureau to describe land attributes such as roads, buildings, rivers, and lakes, as well as areas such as census tracts. TIGER/Line was developed to support and improve the Bureau's process of taking the Decennial Census.

The TIGER files do not contain Census demographic data, but rather mapping data only. GIS can be used to merge Census demographics or other data sources with the TIGER files to create maps and conduct analysis.

To minimize the number of individual files, much information is stored in each file set. In order to access it, utilize mapping or GIS software. For example, Layer 8: edges: All_Lines shapefile contains the geometry and attributes of every topological edge. In order to distinguish and symbolize specific types of edges (e.g. roads edges, hyrdrologic edges, county edges, etc.) the associated MTFCC code should be used to filter the attributes. A list of MTFCC codes can be found in Appendix F.

Folder Structure:
TIGER/Line 2009 is delivered in folder structure by TIGER2009 > State > County > Files

File Naming Convention:
tl_2009_[extent]_[layer].[ext]
Where tl = TIGER/Line
Where [extent] = parent geography entity ID code
Where [layer] = layer tag (i.e. edges, faces, etc.)
Where [ext] = File extension

The entity ID code refers to a data file’s geographic extent. State files have a 2 digit entity ID (ex: /41_Oregon) while county data uses a 5 digit entity ID (ex: /41051_Multnomah_County). These numbers refer to a location’s FIPS code. So all data files associated with Multnomah County will have entity ID 41051 in their file name.

This TIGER/Line Listing on WeoGeo contains all the 2009 TIGER/Line Shapefiles for every county in the USA. Unlike the US Census website, county-by-county download is not required. Multiple counties or even multiple states can be ordered with a single request. This greatly simplifies the download process for Areas of Interest that cross political boundaries.

The TIGER/Line 2009 dataset contains the following layers:

Further information about the specifics of these layers can be found in the online technical documentation.