Introducing the new 1970's aerials

Boyd

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After about three months of starts and stops, the 1970's aerials are finally available! You should see them on the menu between the 1980's and 1930's aerials, here's a link to try.

https://boydsmaps.com/#17.00/39.750392/-74.584688/pines1970/0.00/0.00

Screen Shot 2025-02-12 at 10.13.15 AM.png


If that link doesn't work, or if you have other problems with the site, that will surely be the issue I've mentioned so often. Clearing you cache should fix it, here's a link that may help.


If you've installed the app on the home screen of your phone, that can be more problematic. It's probably easiest to just delete the icon from your home screen and re-install from your browser. This only takes a few seconds, you will find instructions in the help file.

This map replaces the two previous maps that were a mess of 1980's, 1970's and 1977 aerials and any old links will be redirected to the new 1970's aerials. The only 1970's content in those two old maps was the wetlands and tidelands imagery around the coast(s). So, more often than not, you were just looking at 1980's imagery on those old maps but that wasn't necessarily obvious. There were also other problems with overlapping/transparent imagery on those old maps.... so, good riddance! :clint:

This map has much more complete coverage, but there are still major gaps (most notably, Ocean County). In those areas, you'll see a simple monochrome basemap. I thought this was better than just showing a blank screen and it doesn't mislead you with 1980's imagery. Here's a rough summary of the sources for the imagery, but as you look closely at this map, it's a real Frankenstein monster (Frankenmap?), created by cutting up multiple dead bodies and sewing the pieces back together. For the details of the imagery sources, click the mapinfo button.

sources.png


For me, the really interesting part of this map is the DVRPC (Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission) 1970 aerials, which are generally pretty clear. AFAIK, these have never been made into a seamless map before. I georeferenced 372 plates for this map (shown in magenta above). There are more, but I used the 1970 wetlands/1977 tidelands where they were available, to reduce the amount of georeferencing. There are another 330 plates that would fill out Pennsylvania on the map. But considering the amount of work involved, doubt I will ever do that. I was typically only able to do 3 or 4 plates per hour, so the 372 in this map were a pretty heavy lift.

The Atlantic County imagery is also very nice, but the resolution appears to only be about 8 feet, so it looks a little "soft" in most places.

One other note, I found a 1972 aerial image of the Millville area from the NJDEP and used it since there was no coverage from other sources. But the resolution is very low - looks good until you zoom past level 14 and then it's a hot mess. :D I used the Adobe "Super Resolution" Photoshop plug-in to see if it would improve things. Might have made some of the lower resolution zoom levels look better, but basically just creates a mess when you zoom way in. Anyway, I thought it was better to have coverage of the Millville area at the lower zoom levels instead of just showing the basemap, so I used what I had.

In spite of all the time I worked on this, I really haven't spent any time just "exploring" this map for fun. So, I'll leave it up to you to discover what might be revealed and will look forward to discussing it.

Enjoy!
 
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Boyd

Administrator
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Site Administrator
Jul 31, 2004
9,981
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Ben's Branch, Stephen Creek
Here's something I find interesting. Interstate 295 was still under construction in 1970, you can see that it only goes as far North as Route 38, although it's not quite clear how much of the Southern section is actually open. If you follow the intended Route north, doesn't look like they have even done any preliminary work yet, it's completely missing.

Then, when you get to Rancocas Creek, I used a section of the 1977 aerials and you see the completely finished highway. Back to the 1970 aerials as you continue North, looks like they have only just begun clearing the route until you get to the location of the future Exit 47 at Route 541. After that, the route completely vanishes again (until you reach another section of the 1977 aerials). Then, moving North, there's just no sign of it at all it looks like construction has only just begun on Interstate 195 at exit 8.

Switching to the 1980 aerials, you can see that 295 has been completed up to Exit 57 and very little clearing work has been done North of that.
 
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