While database design for geographic information system implementation might be considered a "walk in the park," actual management and implementation of a database development effort can turn into a "journey of a thousand miles." Surviving such a journey becomes dependent on a variety of factors including scope and purpose of the development effort, geographic extent and scale of the database, availability and format of source data, capacity to automate development processes, and management of staffing and funding resources. In this paper, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources staff will share with you many lessons learned from their journey into a State-wide, 1:24,000-scale hydrographic database development effort. Highlights from their journey will include surviving the maze of use-driven database design, choosing a development path, identifying pitfalls (and avoiding them), overcoming funding and staffing hurdles, and the benefits of automation.