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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

1968 Aerial & Hidden Texas History Maps


I want to thank Bruce Grethen, one of my colleagues at the Fort Bend County Historical Commission, for showing the collection of high-resolution aerial photos in the US Geographical Survey archive.  They are terrific.

Here's a low-res version of a December 1968 aerial to orient you before viewing the high-res version.  


Click this link to view the high-res version.  It is a very large file, so it may take considerable time to load.  You get a superb view of where things stood in the southeast quadrant of Sugar Land at that time.  [Note: I just tested the link, and Google Drive doesn't do a good job of showing the magnified image at its best.  I'll see if there's a better method to store and display the image, but I'll leave this version here for now.]  The USGS has aerials of all of Fort Bend County.  I'll post more in the future.

I've wanted to post this next set of maps for a while, but the site had problems when I tested it.  I think it's working well now; click here to view it.  It's called Hidden Texas History and comes from the Texas Land Office.  They have overlaid a modern state map over several historic maps.  You move a 'key hole' viewer over the modern map to see the a selected historic map under it.  (Once you try it, all will become clear.)  

Of course, I was interested in the Austin Colony map which shows where the original leagues were located in terms of today's map.

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