If you look at Willis Hill’s new map, you get a much more detailed look at Albany and Millersburg than on the city maps of old.

Hill makes maps for the city of Albany. His latest work has just won first place in a competition.

Hill’s map is different because it hints at the contours of the land as if the sun was shining on them from the northwest.

Knox Butte, for instamce, which reaches up to 636.5 feet, casts quite a shadow.

The map has all the usual features — streets, parks, waterways and political boundaries — along with public buildings and other special features.

Among other things it shows the layout of all the fairways at both Spring Hill Country Club and the Golf Course of Oregon.

Throughout the Albany area, it outlines slight changes in elevation. It graphically explains, for example, why very heavy rains sometimes flood a segment of Bryant Drive: There’s a shallow channel running across it from the Calapooia River.

Hill took first in best cartography for a street map in a competition held this month in Tacoma. His map competed against 14 others at a conference of geographic information systems specialists from the Pacific Northwest and western Canada.

Hill was awarded a $25 gift card to REI, an outdoor gear and camping outlet. He is donating the card to Soroptimist International of Albany for use at its annual Walk for the Cause of Breast Cancer Awareness on Saturday, Oct. 6, in Albany.

About 250 people that use Environmental Systems Research Institute software attended the conference. Most represented federal, state, county and city government and private businesses.

Hill said he won because of the amount and clarity of details and annotations and the map’s general appearance.

“I worked on the map over a period of about three weeks,” he said. “Much of the data on the map was derived from aerial photographs.”

The new map was designed to be placed on a wall. It could be framed or put on poster board, he said. Copies measuring 42 by 50 inches are available for $5 each at the Public Works Department on the second floor of city hall, 333 Broadalbin St. S.W.

Hill has worked for the city for 29 years, doing GIS work for the past 12 years. Prior to this job, he was a maintenance supervisor for the city’s sanitary sewer collection system.