[PRCo] Re: Penn Pilot

[Donald Galt]

On 24 Jun 2008 at 12:18, Fred Schneider wrote:

> I'm glad, Don, to see that someone is having fun with them.  

Oh, I love old aerial photos.

Years ago in a used book store in Lancaster I stumbled across a soil atlas of 
the county, with the soil information overprinted on just such photos. At the 
time I was into my ancestors in the Earls and Salisbury townships, and what 
made the atlas a "gotta" purchase was that historic property boundaries - going 
back even to the original 18th century patents from the Penn family - could be 
descried from the field lines in the photos, in a way that they never showed up 
on topo maps.

Guess I need to dig it out to see whether it shows any traces of Conestoga 
Traction, though I'm pretty sure it is based on a more recent edition of the 
photos.

Right now I'm concentrating on downloading from Washington, Westmoreland & 
Fayette. As far as I know, USGS never got around to mapping most the West Penn 
areas of Westmoreland when the trolley line was around - everything is either 
too old or too recent - but comparing these aerial photos with the PennDOT 
historical maps answers most of my questions.

Don G