lmullen

library(rgdal)     # R wrapper around GDAL/OGR
library(ggplot2)   # for general plotting
library(ggmaps)    # for fortifying shapefiles

# First read in the shapefile, using the path to the shapefile and the shapefile name minus the
# extension as arguments
shapefile <- readOGR("path/to/shapefile/", "name_of_shapefile")

# Next the shapefile has to be converted to a dataframe for use in ggplot2
shapefile_df <- fortify(shapefile)