This site is primarily focused on the use of fully-featured Geographic Information Systems such as QGIS. But, using a GIS requires time and special knowledge. An alternative is to use Google Earth or Google Maps (and there are other options). These systems don't provide the features of a full GIS but they are easy to use, and are provide a convenient alternative for viewing and sharing limited geographic data sets.
Google Maps is an on-line system; you load and view maps in a web browser. There is also a version of Google Earth that runs embedded inside your browser. This is what you see when you switch Google Earth to the Satellite view. But a more powerful alternative -Google Earth Pro (GEP)-- is available for free download. You can download it here.
GEP is quite useful for viewing limited data sets overlaid on the satellite imagery that Google provides. However, the performance of GEP degrades quickly if your data sets are too large or if you load too many layers. You can work around this limitation by creating smaller, more focused, data sets; for example, the water bodies in a single forest management unit instead of all the water bodies for New York State. But this runs into another GEP limitation. Managing layers in GEP is quite tedious and you can spend a lot of time adding and removing layers.
There is an alternative. The native format for the geographic data you work with in Google Earth is known as KML; a structured text format. This means that you can open a KML file in any text editor and read and edit the contents of the file. And the use of the KML format extends to Google Earth itself; the layers and folders you see in the "My Places" panel of Google Earth are stored in a special KML file that GEP stashes on your computer. That file is named myplaces.kml, and while the location of varies based on the operating system and the version of Google Earth you are using, a recent windows machine you will find it in the folder: C:\Users\<your-windows-user-name>\AppData\LocalLow\Google\GoogleEarth\myplaces.kml
NOTE: never open or edit the file named myplaces.kml directly. If you do you might lose your data or even corrupt your Google Earth installation. Make a copy of the file and open the copy.
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The solution I chose was to write a script to run through the file (a copy of course) and save each folder, document and placemark to a new, separate, KML file. I could then remove (making a copy) the MyPlaces.kml file used by GE (make sure that GE is not running if you do this). The next time GE is run it creates a new and empty MyPlaces.kml file and you are back to a "clean" install of GE. The separate KML files created by the script can then be opened using GE when I need them.
I'm making this script available for anyone who wants to run it and you can access here:
https://gist.github.com/kentstanton/3441cc368d3c52621b19
Please note that you must have PowerShell 5.0 installed on your computer to run the script and you need to know how to run PowerShell scripts. If you are familiar with PowerShell programming you can alter the script as needed. And it would not be too difficult to port the code to a different language if you do not have a Windows computer to run it on. The script requires Windows PowerShell 5.0; the very latest version (as of this writing). I'm working on a larger project that will incorporate this functionality and remove this requirement but I wanted to go ahead and make this available now because it might be useful to some people as is.