Historic Aerials: Old to New Land Images

[dave1949]

This site can be interesting if your property area is in their database. My lot has aerial photos/images back to 1953, 1965, 1997, 2007 .... Fun to compare what was to what is, and watch the changes over the years.

Search on your street address. Turn on "Slide" to see a split screen of different age images. There is a slider button to wipe back and forth across the images which makes it very easy to compare the same places over time.

NETR Online ? Historic Aerials

 

[davesl708]

That is interesting to see how my area has changed since the thirties. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Oaktree]

Very interesting to see how much has changed both where I live now and where I grew up over not just my lifetime but my adult years. Quite a reminder of how clear-cut the area was in the not-too-distant past (logging was king in much of northern New England in the 19th & first half of the 20 centuries).

I do wish there was a way to control where their watermark was placed...it always seemed to be right on top of what I was interested in looking at.

 

[s219]

Pretty cool. They don't go back as far as my county website, which has aerials of my land going back to 1937, and then some hand labeled maps before that (all on the county's property/tax/GIS website). I stumbled on that a couple years after buying our land, and spent hours looking at the imagery. Was able to overlay some of it on our plat in a graphics program, and really learn a lot.

The most interesting thing I learned was how many times and when the land was logged. It's been clear cut at least 3-4 times since the late 1800s, most recently in 1990. I was able to determine where some of the old logging trails were, and you can see the remnants on the ground in the form of decayed slash piles, skidder trails (ruts very evident all these years later), and litter. And there are lots of old stumps here and there (the pine stumps are loaded with sap and make great "fat wood" when I have the time to dig then up). We know where the logging camp was based on the bottles of bar oil and whiskey still laying around. When we were building, I nicknamed the place "wolf's head camp" because I found an old bottle of wolf's head brand oil with a cool logo. I ran my skid trail and put my logs in the same locations, primarily because those areas had not been replanted with pines, so they only needed minimal clearing to be used.

 

[dave1949]

Ya, it's logical how land use patterns remain the same unless it is totally changed. I can see a lane in the 1953 image going back to a hay field. I'm working on reclaiming that field now and the outlines are about identical, and I built a road to the field exactly where the old lane was. Given the terrain, wet/dry/rocky areas, I ended up in the same places.

The rock walls and remnants of barb wire fence are pretty good indicators of course, which is some of what I followed for clearing the old field. Still interesting to have the visual image though and to see the tree cover changes. I think there was an apple orchard back then about where we built; regular spaced rows of trees can be seen. There are still volunteer apple trees across that area but no sign of the original orchard trees except for a couple of well rotted tall stumps that could have been apple.

 

[RobA]

Thanks for sharing. Very interesting.

 

[Country Geek]

Too cool. A Friday afternoon productivity stealer!

 

[RedNeckGeek]

My place is perched on the side of a canyon that was flooded back in the '60s. Very interesting to use the side-by-side view to see where the old bridge was (it's now under water, but chances are good it will reemerge this fall because of the drought).

Thanks for posting this link, Dave.:thumbsup: I'm sure my neighbors will appreciate using it as much as I do.

 

[TheGoose]

You can do the same thing with Google Earth. Look for the time icon.

 

[RedNeckGeek]

I wondered about that too, Goose, but Google Earth doesn't do the side-by-side trick, and doesn't go all the way back to 1951...
:laughing: