Pre-Sprawl Aerial Images: 'The Next Best Thing to a Time Machine'

The state of Connecticut boasts a historical snapshot that few parts of the country can match of life before World War II, before the Interstate Highway System, before the advent of suburbia as we know it. Back in 1934, Connecticut completed an aerial survey of every corner of state land, a process that produced thousands of black-and-white, 9-by-9-inch public photographs of Depression-era farmland and pre-car-crazed towns. At the time, no other state had done this.

The images have since been digitized and stitched together. And they are at their most fascinating when paired against our modern equivalent: Google satellite imagery taken some eight decades later. A project between Trinity College and the University of Connecticut Libraries, Map and Geographic Information Center (more appropriately: MAGIC) offers us a chance to trace this sweeping story of change.