Us zip code shapefile

As you can see from the map of the first 3 digits of zip codes , the digits after the first are also generally assigned from east to west. In the map, 0 is closer to white and 9 is much more vivid.

It's easy to follow the gradient across each of the zones even though there are a few exceptions such as the southwest tip of Georgia which uses 39XXX like central Mississippi.

Despite the fact that ZIP codes seem to be geographic in nature, that wasn't their intended purpose. They are intended to group mail to allow the USPS to deliver mail more efficiently. Some ZIP codes will span multiple states in order to make mail routing and delivery more efficient.

In most cases, addresses in close proximity to each other are grouped in the same ZIP code which gives the appearance that ZIP codes are defined by a clear geographic boundary. However, some ZIP codes have nothing to do with geogaphic areas. When ZIP codes appear to be geographically grouped, a clear shape cannot always be drawn around the ZIP code because ZIP codes are only assigned to a point of delivery and not the spaces between delivery points.

In areas without a regular postal route or no mail delivery, ZIP codes may not be defined or have unclear boundaries.

The main issue is discussed above: there simply isn't always a clear geographic boundary for a ZIP code. The Census Bureau and many other commercial services will try to interpolate the data to create polygons shapes using straight lines to represent the approximate area covered by a ZIP code, but none of these maps are official or entirely accurate.

They provide a very close approximation of the area covered by a ZIP code. Note: the TLID represents "complete chains" or arcs in the network. The complete chains are topologically correct according to the meta data :. There is an GIS. RT files to shapefiles. I haven't tested it myself, but the code may be relevant. Also, I am not an expert with Tiger data. A common misconception is that zip codes are areas, when in fact they are routes.

You can conceptualize the area these routes occupy and make your analysis that way, but many people will see this as a flawed or problematic analysis especially if your data type conflicts with or exaggerates error created by that flawed understanding of zip codes. Sign up to join this community.

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Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 4 years, 9 months ago. Active 1 month ago. Viewed 7k times. Would anyone know where I could find this data? Improve this question. BStack 78 9 9 bronze badges. Dude NULL. Virgin Islands once each decade following the decennial census. These codes may contain leading zeros.

The generalized ZCTA boundaries in this file are based on those delineated following the Census. Simplified representations of selected geographic areas from the Census Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here. The easiest is probably the U. Postal Service boundaries. Search for any data by state, such as population, and then add ZIP code to the geography and choose download data as a shapefile. Now finally some geospatial work.

That says what coordinate reference system was used to create the file. Here it was Without getting too deep into the weeds, an epsg basically indicates what system was used to translate areas on a three-dimensional globe—the Earth—to two-dimensional coordinates latitude and longitude. This is important because there are a lot of different coordinate reference systems. I want my ZIP code polygons and address points to use the same one, so they line up properly.