Have you
ever had an address from a directory in the first half of the 20th
century and then put it in Google Maps (or something comparable) and nothing
happens?
Often, when I go to try and figure out what is going
on, especially if the address was in a city, I look at an older map and then a
newer one and realize that a big highway is running right over that
neighborhood! The same happens when you
know someone lived off a creek (clearly shown on an older map) to find that the
town is now under a reservoir!
Much of our landscape has changed as a result of
building highways and creating lakes.
Whole neighborhoods no longer exist except in
records.
I bring this up because such changes in “the lay of
the land” are important to our research and understanding the records to look
for.
As with all our research, understanding the context
of highways as presented in Highways gutted American cities. So why did they
build them? helps us better appreciate these roads that we often take for granted. Since most of these were built after I was
born, they have always existed for me.
It’s hard to imagine what once was when I have no memory of a vastly
different landscape.
We need to remember – they didn’t always exist!
On a related note, there is a website, 60 Years of
Urban Change: Midwest (links are
provided to other geographic areas as well), which talks about many cities across the country and has interactive maps
depicting them from the 1950s to the present.
“60 years has made a big difference in the urban form of American cities.
The most rapid change occurred during the mid-century urban renewal period that
cleared large tracts of urban land for new highways, parking, and public
facilities or housing projects. Fine-grained networks of streets and
buildings on small lots were replaced with superblocks and megastructures.”
I find historical context pieces like this
fascinating. They remind me to try and
look through records and color my interpretation of people’s lives by better
understanding what the world looked like to them at the time, not the world as
I see it today.
Did you ever have an aha moment where you realized that
there was some element of geography that has completely changed since your
ancestors were alive?
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