Aerial photo books from the 1950s

Those who do 20th-century Midwestern genealogy may already know about this series of county histories whose most desirable feature at this distance in time is their aerial photographs of named farms in a couple dozen Illinois counties and a few in Iowa, Indiana, and Wisconsin. A larger list is available on WorldCat, where I searched on "american aerial history county series." Many are available on line at Internet Archive (first link above) and other locations.

Metro Midwestern Aerial Views

Need a way to while away the long weekend?

Shirl Kennedy at The Resource Shelf alerts us to HistoricAerials.com, which offers the ability to compare aerial photos from different years. In the Midwest, Iowa has the best coverage; elsewhere earlier years are available mainly in metropolitan areas: Milwaukee, Green Bay, Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati. The other non-metropolitan Midwestern area with deeper time coverage is the scenic southern part of Illinois. Of course, those who want to see the landscape from the air prior to the 1930s are out of luck!