The Brunch Table

11/12/2006

Young Civilization

Filed under: — Joe @ 1:09 pm

As we were walking home from brunch today, Justina noted that Bernal Heights was turning green again (now that the rainy season is starting). I wondered aloud whether there had been more trees on the hill in the past. Justina said, “If you look at 1946 in Google Earth, it looks like there were even less trees back then.” “Does Google Earth have pictures from 1900 for that area?”, I asked. Then I realized what I was saying.

  • justina

    Psst… it should be “there were fewer trees back then.” ;)

  • http://retrovirus.com Joe

    Are you sure that’s what you actually said? ;]

    The funny thing is that the very next day, Google announced that they had added a bunch of historical maps from the Rumsey collection to Google Earth, including San Francisco in 1850-ish:
    http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/11/old-world-meets-new-on-google-earth.html

    Of course, San Francisco didn’t include the hill that we now know as Bernal Heights back then…

Powered by WordPress