Whether you are a student, researcher, or GIS professional, GADM 3.6 remains a gold standard. Bookmark this article and refer to the troubleshooting table whenever a downloaded file refuses to behave.
The raster::getData('GADM', country='USA', level=1) now defaults to GADM 4.0. To force version 3.6:
If you encounter a problem not covered here, check the gadm36 tag on Stack Overflow or the R-sig-geo mailing list – the user community for v3.6 is still very active.
. While newer versions like 4.1 exist, version 3.6 remains widely used in academic research and legacy GIS projects. 1. Downloading the Data