The footprint of the Town of Monument is a constantly changing landscape. Luckily, the town has a valuable asset to keep track of it.

Meet Monument’s map master, GIS Specialist Connie Driedger.

Driedger was recognized as one of Monument’s two employees of the year for 2025 during the Jan. 5 meeting of the Monument Town Council.

“If you know Connie, Connie loves a map and Connie loves to use her mapping services to help not only staff members and the town but also our partner agencies,” Town Manager Madeline VanDenHoek said. “She develops great tools that help us with efficiency and coordination.

“She demonstrates great leadership and adaptability. She’s professional and collaborative, she has a positive attitude, she’s great to work with and she’s very dedicated to our community.”

She also creates amazing maps.

For map lovers, there’s hours of entertainment and intrigue. For everyone else, there’s a motherload of valuable information in an easy-to-use format.

There are currently more than a dozen maps available, including the town’s official zoning map, parks and trails, the water district, cemetery maps and several district maps. Many of these maps are interactive.

According to usgs.gov, GIS “is a computer system that analyzes and displays geographically referenced information.” The maps have endless applications for government agencies, businesses and prospective businesses, scientists, farmers and citizens in general.

Driedger explains it more succinctly.

“What GIS (geographic information system) is doing is taking all kinds of information, plugging it into a map and you can run analysis on that,” Driedger said. “The maps help us to understand the area we live in.

“My job here is to collect the data and create maps to help the town.”

If you’re looking to open a business, this allows you to analyze where would be the best location for it, whether it is complementary businesses nearby or population makeup or any one of a number of other factors.

On the cemetery maps, you can quickly find out where people are buried, while council residential map shows where the voting boards are. Another map shows what the planning board is currently working on.

“They’re good tools,” Driedger said.

Go to townofmonument.org and click on the “maps” icon to explore for yourself.