UC Santa Cruz Aerial Photographs Collection

Collection Contents

This collection contains aerial imagery (photographs taken from the air) covering Santa Cruz, Monterey, San Benito, Santa Clara, and the southern portion of San Mateo Counties from 1928-2003.  Each flight includes information about the geographic extent of the flight, the altitude of the aircraft, the scale of the resulting images, and the format of the original images.  Most of the photos are black and white, with a few flights in color and color-infrared. The scale is the ratio between the size of the object in the photo compared to the actual size of the object, indicated by: 1:4200, 1:7200, etc. The smaller the number after the colon, the closer to the ground the picture was taken and the more detail that can be seen in the photos. Included here is an updated geo-rectified index of the photos in each flight, with the photo numbers indicated over a topographic map of the area of the flight, showing an approximate geographic location of each photo. Most of the flights were flown by or for federal government agencies, including the USGS, USDA, the US Forestry Service, and we believe they are in the public domain. For more information, see the library's aerial photo guide.