Sample KMZ File
A downloadable sample KMZ file — a zipped KML archive — containing 15 real US landmark locations as Placemarks with names, descriptions, and elevations. Use it to test KMZ extraction, Google Earth imports, or the converters on this site.
sample-locations.kmz
Data Preview
| 1 | name | description | latitude | longitude | elevation |
| 2 | Mount Rainier | Glaciated stratovolcano in Washington | 46.8523 | -121.7603 | 4392 |
| 3 | Half Dome | Granite dome above Yosemite Valley | 37.7459 | -119.5332 | 2694 |
| 4 | Grand Canyon South Rim | Overlook near Grand Canyon Village | 36.0544 | -112.1401 | 2093 |
| 5 | Old Faithful | Predictable geyser in Yellowstone | 44.4605 | -110.8281 | 2240 |
| 6 | Denali | Highest peak in North America | 63.0692 | -151.007 | 6190 |
| 7 | Angels Landing | Ridge viewpoint in Zion Canyon | 37.269 | -112.9469 | 1765 |
| 8 | Longs Peak | Fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park | 40.2549 | -105.616 | 4346 |
| 9 | Mauna Kea | Dormant volcano on the island of Hawaii | 19.8206 | -155.4681 | 4207 |
| 10 | Crater Lake | Deepest lake in the United States | 42.9446 | -122.109 | 1883 |
| 11 | Mount Whitney | Highest summit in the contiguous United States | 36.5785 | -118.2923 | 4421 |
| 12 | Badwater Basin | Lowest point in North America, Death Valley | 36.2461 | -116.8172 | -86 |
| 13 | Great Sand Dunes | Tallest dunes in North America | 37.7916 | -105.5943 | 2590 |
| 14 | Cadillac Mountain | Granite summit in Acadia National Park | 44.3528 | -68.2247 | 466 |
| 15 | Mount Mitchell | Highest peak east of the Mississippi | 35.7648 | -82.2652 | 2037 |
| 16 | Guadalupe Peak | Highest point in Texas | 31.8914 | -104.8607 | 2667 |
Schema
| Field | Type | Description |
|---|---|---|
| name | string | Landmark name, from each Placemark's name element in the archived KML |
| description | string | One-line description of the landmark, from the description element |
| latitude | number | WGS84 latitude in decimal degrees (second value in the coordinates tuple) |
| longitude | number | WGS84 longitude in decimal degrees (first value in the coordinates tuple) |
| elevation | number | Altitude in meters (third value in the coordinates tuple); negative for Badwater Basin |
About the KMZ Format
KMZ is the compressed sibling of KML: a standard ZIP archive whose primary entry is a KML document, conventionally named doc.kml. Google Earth reads and writes KMZ by default because XML compresses well and a single archive can also bundle custom icons, overlay images, and models next to the markup. This sample contains exactly one entry — doc.kml — holding the same 15 US landmark <Placemark> elements as the KML sample, each with a <name>, <description>, and a <Point> coordinate tuple in longitude,latitude,altitude order.
Because the payload is KML, field survival is identical: names, descriptions, and full 3D coordinates all make it through, including Badwater Basin’s negative altitude of −86 m. The compression layer changes the container, not the content.
How to open it
- Google Earth (web or desktop) — KMZ is its native distribution format; just drag the file in
- Any unzip tool — rename to
.zip(or don’t;unzipdoesn’t care) and extractdoc.kml - QGIS — opens KMZ directly via GDAL’s LIBKML driver
- Programmatically — read it with any ZIP library, then parse the first
.kmlentry as XML
Things to test with it
KMZ is the simplest binary format in this set, which makes it a good first target for archive-handling code: verify you locate the KML entry by extension rather than assuming a fixed name, since not every producer uses doc.kml.
The same 15 locations are also available as GeoJSON, GPX, and a Shapefile, so you can compare formats over identical data. To pull the Placemarks out as rows, use the KMZ to CSV converter; to build a compressed archive from a spreadsheet, use CSV to KMZ.