Here’s a pop quiz for the Minnesotans out there: what does this photo depict?

Give up?  Ok, what if I show you this view instead?

The two views are, of course, the same location.  The only difference is that they are separated by 53 years of construction.  The first image depicts the southeast corner of Maple Grove, MN in 1957, and the second image is the same area from 2010.  I chose these crops because they are roughly centered on the house I grew up in.  That house would not exist for almost 20 years after the 1957 shot was taken.

It turns out that the University of Minnesota maintains an online interface to its extensive historical map collection, which is where the 1957 aerial photo came from. (The 2010 photo is from the always excellent Google Maps.)  I was especially pleased to find that the collection includes numerous photos from before the era of freeways.  The Twin Cities look so oddly foreign without their belts of asphalt.