Many of the features we had to deal with in the Sq___ renaming were small streams and creeks. For some reason, Sq___ Creek seemed to be a very popular name. In most cases, the creeks weren’t present on OSM, and as part of the renaming, we decided to add missing features with the new names so that future mappers wouldn’t unknowingly add the features with the old Sq___ names. So, we had to map a lot of small creeks.
One of the challenges with mapping named waterways is identifying the full extent of the waterway. Where is the mouth of the waterway? Where is the source? Of the many branches upstream from the mouth, which branch is the identified course?
If you’re just working with GNIS, the GNIS data has two or sometimes three sets of coordinates for waterway features. The first coordinate is the mouth. If there is a second coordinate, it falls somewhere in the middle of the waterway. The last coordinate is the source.
From there, you can use topo and aerial maps to trace the course of the waterway by hand.
Alternatively, you can download the local data file from the National Hydrography Dataset, find the waterway you want, merge it into an OSM layer, and clean it up before uploading it. Here’s how that works:






