[GIS] Downloading multiple files from TIGER FTP site

censusftptiger

TIGER FTP Site

Hello everyone! I've been downloading TIGER data per county from the FTP site one at a time, with some states having hundreds of files. I was curious if there was a faster way to download maybe all the files for each county for each state at once? Thanks for your time and help!

Attached is a picture of what i'm dealing with, would like to eventually download all the files for each state at once versus one at a time.

Best Answer

Use an FTP client (e.g. FileZilla), which will allow you to download multiple files at once. After installing and starting your FTP client software:

  1. Connect to ftp2.census.gov
    1. username = anonymous
    2. password = your email address
  2. Navigate to the folder where you want to save files on your local system
  3. Navigate to the geo/tiger/TIGER2012/EDGES directory (or other directory if necessary) on the remote site
  4. Select the file(s) you want to download.
    1. depending on your software, you may be able to click one file then use a combination of shift-click or ctrl-click to select multiple files, or drag a box around the desired files
  5. Drag the selected files from the remote system to your local system, or click the software's transfer/download button
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