Imagery Collection

Aerial Photography Collection2000 Eugene air photo

The MAP Library holds extensive collections of print and digital aerial imagery, primarily of Oregon. The collection dates back to 1929 and is updated regularly. The collections tend to be organized by provenance, that is, by the agency or company that produced the original images. The print collection is not open to the public. Patrons are asked to use our MAP Research Service and submit a  request form to gain access to the collection. We have images from agencies such as the USDA Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service (now the NRCS), the Bureau of Land Management, the National Forest Service, and the Oregon Department of Revenue, to name a few.

Historic aerial photography is a valuable research tool for both physical and human geography. For example, click on the following thumbnails to see how the UO campus has changed through time:

 

1936: from one of our oldest projects; produced by the Army Corps of Engineers 1955: produced by  photogrammetrist H. G. Chickering 1977: produced by a private company,  Skyview Aerial Survey, Inc. 1990: produced by the Bureau of Land Management 2005: from the Oregon Imagery Explorer

View more UO Campus Aerials

Guides to the Aerial Print Collection

Information about the photography has been organized and annotated for primary coverage of Oregon and Washington cities and towns, which can be downloaded as a complete file or viewed online. For aerial photography within the National Forest and Bureau of Land Management, we have organized and annotated aerial flight projects by their forest name (e.g. Willamette, Fremont, etc..) or district, as in the case of BLM.
Feel free to browse these online or download them for local use.

Digital Imagery

Increasingly, aerial imagery is being captured and used digitally with GIS software. The MAP Library is currently evaluating how best to offer online access to our digital collections. We do offer unrestricted access to 1995 1m DOQs in MrSID format for most of northwestern Oregon on our GIS download pages:

The remainder of our digital collections are available only upon request.  Highlights include:

We also have frequently requested selections of the print collection pre-scanned for campus researchers:

  • Mt. Pisgah
  • The confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette Rivers
  • The downtown Portland waterfront north of Burnside.

Sample Photography from our collection:

About Resolution

Once scanned, the scale of the original printed image becomes unimportant, and difficult to determine without knowing the parameters of how the image was scanned and the scale of the original photograph.  In the digital realm, we more often talk of 'ground pixels':  the real-world size of one pixel in the image.  For example, a photograph with a scale of 1:12,000, scanned at 600 pixels-per-inch, yields an image with 1.667 foot pixels. 
 

Other sites for Aerial Photography:

Regional Source

National Sources

Out of State Historic Aerial Photography

1501 Kincaid Street, Eugene, OR 97403-1299 | T: (541) 346-3053 | F: (541) 346-3485