Vintage Aerial Photos

[Roma Jean Turner]

I found this site.  It is called Vintage Aerial     http://www.vintageaerial.com.   It says they have 504 aerial photos of Elk Co.  You have to fill out what you are interested in seeing and then they get back to you and make arrangements with you to see the photos.  I don't have anything in particular to look at, but thought this site might be of interest to some of you.

[W. Gray]

I took advantage of telling them what I wanted down to the township number and the section number.

I hope they don't come back and say the photo is $100. 

[Marcia Moore]

     These photos are expensive.  We bought two from them from Elk County - one of Tim's parent's place and one of his grandparent's place.  The smallest photo we could buy was a 5 x 7, and they each cost around $100, plus $15 shipping.  This did not even include frames.  I tried to get the company to mail both of the photos to me together so I would only have to pay the shipping cost once, but they would not do that, so it cost me $230.00 total. 

[W. Gray]

After I posted, I went back to the site and surfed through some more of their pages.

Found they were offering a 12 x 18 for $349 and and 20 X 30 for $449. And this is black and white.

I had an Uncle and Aunt that had a reasonably large aerial photograph of their farm in Elk County. I never could get them to say where or how they got it. Maybe they did not want to say what they paid for it, but then it could have been a gift.

I thought something was weird when these folks insisted on a telephone number in addition to an Email address.

This could be interesting but I am betting they do not have the a photo of the place I was inquiring about.

[Marcia Moore]

     If the place you are after is in Elk County, they very well might have it.  I checked back at that time to see if they had Osage Co., OK aerial views and they did not, but they had about everything in Elk County.

[W. Gray]

The farm I inquired about was in Elk County. The farm was just southwest of Howard but ownership was not in my relative's name and I don't recall who they rented from. And today there is absolutely nothing there: house, separate auto garage, large barn, pig barn, sheep barn, implement barns, cow milking barn, a long chicken house, separator house, not to mention the out house, are all gone. Almost all of these farm buildings including the outhouse were painted red.

It seems that each time I go into that web site they change the four or five Elk County pictures used as a backdrop. So far cannot recognize any of them. Maybe if I go in there often enough, it will pop up.

Have not heard back from them yet as they say a "specialty librarian" will have to perform a search.

Will see what they say, but I don't believe I want to fork over "them kind of dollars."

[Marcia Moore]

     The way they have their pictures set up you can look at all the farmsteads in the entire area.  Just give them some sort of a physical address and they can find it, along with all of the neighboring farms, as well.  They won't tell you about the 5x7 photos unless you are persistent, as they want to sell you a bigger photo that is framed.
     It was funny when we were dealing with the man, who was quite nice, and looking at a photo of my husband's parent's home place.  Tim said, "Wow, you can even see the chickens in the photo."  The guy replied, "Yes, and if you get a large photo you will be able to tell which ones are hens and which ones are roosters."  To which Tim replied, "I already know that.  My Mom never had roosters."

[W. Gray]

I gave them the 3-digit road numbers that formed the closest intersection. They asked for the township and section number which I gave them, but they did not ask for a range number.

From looking at the site again, all of their Elk County photos might be from 1978.

My relatives moved to town in 1951 and I do not believe anyone occupied that farm again. At one point all of the buildings had been torn down and only the house and main barn were left.

In the 70s, I and another relative who had lived there, trespassed and went inside the house hoping to find something. There was all kinds of junk litter from beer bottles, cans, and other stuff inside from school kids having parties.

I have a feeling if they do have a photo and it is from 1978, it might not amount to much left.

Finally, the house was torn down and then only the main barn was left, still painted a nice red and not looking like it had aged much. However, it burned down in the 90s from a grass fire set by the land owner. 

This is an interesting journey, and I can thank Roma Jean for pointing to the web site.

[Roma Jean Turner]

Send Jarhead out there with his metal detector. Who knows what he might find to go with your picture.

[W. Gray]

Struck out.

Their Elk County photos are from 1978.

A fellow called and wanted more information about the location and also wanted a current address for the property.

Although the web site asked for section and township information, he did not know whether he needed the civic township or the survey township.

After some discussion as to what might or might not have been there in 1978, we agreed to drop the search.