BlockBefore
Decorative drawing: a fortress-like armory with crenellated towers. Not a photograph of this place.

Explore by state

Old maps, photographs and public records of American places. Pick a state on the map, or use the field below.

The archive is growing: 32 states published so far, with more on the way. Tell us which state or county you want first and we will build toward it.

Pick a state

32 of 50 covered

Highlighted states have records. The rest are not yet ingested, and nothing here pretends otherwise: a state the archive has not reached cannot be opened.

Alaska Hawaii Alabama Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Alaska Hawaii
The lower 48, from Census Bureau boundaries. Alaska and Hawaii are left off this drawing because including them shrinks every other state past recognition; both will appear in the list above once they carry records.

What is covered

Counted from the pages this site actually publishes, not from what the sources contain.

StateCounties SettlementsListed Narrative
Alabama676,3871,372103,308 words
Arizona151,7801,4472,332 words
California586,6742,9121,954,932 words
Colorado641,8991,609163,271 words
Delaware31,63468397,702 words
Florida673,5251,80776,701 words
Georgia1597,3962,229942,747 words
Hawaii556234211,577 words
Idaho441,3221,06916,882 words
Illinois1024,9751,96110,504,630 words
Indiana923,6232,1395,683,219 words
Iowa992,3332,5128,003,666 words
Kansas1051,6771,612663,985 words
Kentucky1205,7783,380401,547 words
Massachusetts142,2804,4657,296,851 words
Michigan832,9591,981364,361 words
Minnesota872,2511,7302,972,343 words
Missouri1154,5232,3752,397,447 words
Montana561,8641,283not yet read
Nebraska931,1301,109949,952 words
Nevada171,1013611,534 words
New Mexico331,58484566,609 words
New York626,7246,58412,565,605 words
Ohio887,0354,00519,552,723 words
Oklahoma771,9511,369149,643 words
Oregon361,5802,023726,063 words
South Carolina465,0311,62847,093 words
Texas2549,2513,345314,387 words
Utah292,0751,577107,822 words
Washington392,6691,6431,316,548 words
Wisconsin722,5162,4444,575,425 words
Wyoming2358653616,870 words

What the archive holds

Five kinds of record. Every county starts with its map sheets and its National Register listings; the atlases, county histories and surveyed structures are added county by county, and the table above counts what each state has so far. All of it is public domain or openly licensed, and every page links to the original it was taken from.

Topographic sheetsEvery United States Geological Survey sheet that covers a place, from the 1890s to the 2000s, with the earliest and latest wipeable against each other.
Fire insurance atlasesThe printed index of a town's mills, tanneries and hotels, read off the scanned sheet. Those names have never been text anywhere else.
County historiesNineteenth-century narrative compiled while the settlers' children were alive to be asked, reproduced complete rather than summarised.
National Register recordsEvery listed property, with the full federal nomination that argued it on to the register.
Surveyed structuresBuildings and bridges recorded by the Historic American Engineering Record, with their written histories.

Provenance

  • State boundaries. Census Bureau TIGERweb. A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
  • Coverage figures. Computed from the pages in this build. They change when the archive grows and are not quoted from anywhere.
  • Rights. Sources carry four different bases, set out on the rights page.