In a world with Google Earth, the Three Rivers Park District's PDF park maps are looking downright old-fashioned. Their paper versions? Practically archaic.

But soon the maps will get a high-tech, user-friendly makeover.

The park district, like Carver County Parks, is busy collecting data that will soon allow it to create zoomable, clickable, searchable online park maps.

By sometime next year, a family could open the mapping application and -- within 60 seconds -- find all parks within 15 miles of their house, view trails that traverse those parks and then click on a particular trail to find out whether it's gravel or paved.

Besides the technical "wow" factor, the maps will help people find nearby green spaces, and they'll help local planners make sure there are more green spaces nearby.

Studies have shown "a correlation between trail access and physical activity," according to Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota.

So the insurance company is helping fund Carver County's work through its "Designing Active Communities" program. The program will pay for the creation of the county-wide map so planners can better incorporate trails in their planning. But it will assure residents' access to that map, said Tracy Bade, a public health planner for Carver County.

"It's about raising awareness not only at the city planner level, but also to the public," Bade said. "The site will encourage use of our existing trails by making it that much easier to see where to go."

Carver County is working quickly to get its data into map form in order to see more clearly where city and regional trails connect -- or don't connect, as is often the case.

"It's a great planning tool in that way," said Marty Walsh, director of Carver County Parks. "When you have all the cities' trails in the same place, it's easy to see the gaps."

The county will use that knowledge in updating its comprehensive plan, which will guide growth and decisions about open space and trails until 2030. Cities within Carver County say a county-wide map would help their own planning efforts.

Eric Billiet, a Watertown parks and recreation commission member, said deciding how to connect trails means "getting out paper maps and trying to draw things. To have something like the online maps the county's talking about would be great."

Lots of labor

Behind the maps are months of work with years' worth of data. Using GPS units, Three Rivers employees have been out in the field, collecting GPS coordinates of park features -- including each individual tree. Aerial photos and plans also lend details, said Greg Schauer, Geographic Information Systems coordinator for the park district.

"The biggest challenge is that the park district is so big and so spread out and we do so many things," he said. "We have trails, but we also have downhill skiing, water features, wildlife applications ... there's just so much different data to collect."

Carver County has had its own issues with data collection. Cities keep their data in different formats, with different fields and different information. "Each city has its own idea of what's important and how to organize it," said Peter Henschel, GIS supervisor for Carver County.

And as trails are added and changed, the county will need to update its site to reflect that.

"Maintaining the data is a big chore," Henschel said. "But it seems like most of the cities are interested in this for the long-term."