1890 Map of Redding meets Google Earth

This Map of Redding from 1890 matches up well with satelite imagery borrowed from Google Earth. I did these frames some time ago, but finally got around to animating them.

Click to enlarge

1890-map-stacked-2

Being a rail town on a river, things still line up very well. Except now you can see the train tracks turn north over the river, since they built Shasta Dam. The Redding Cemetery is easy to see. The sawmill became the Posse Grounds.  Looks like our city hall was once a horse racing track!

Deakins Riverside Farm became Turtle Bay and The Garden Tract. I wonder if farmer Deakin had any inkling that he had probably the most valuable real estate in Redding’s future. That stretch of river holds so much promise, still.

I love old maps. I don’t recall how I came across this specific one. If you like this sort of thing, check out this 1872 map of Redding overlay I posted in 2011.

 
This version of the 1890 Map of Redding came from the Shasta County Library site. The building is the old courthouse in Redding that no longer exists. You can click this to to enlarge also.
1890-map-of-redding

Redding’s population map

Here’s an interactive map that charts a single dot for every person counted in the 2010 Census. All 308,450,225 of us.
Population Map of Redding CA

It correlates well with the image from my post from a few weeks ago that showed U.S. lights at night from space.

That makes sense. Each of us humans has a light or two.

I love seeing maps and charts of our region, and the patterns they reveal. All the real estate there is.

Redding stands out, for both our light at night and these clusters of humans surrounded by less densely populated terrain. Yet we are connected in tenuous strands to larger clusters north and south.

Click on either image to get to the interactive map, where you can zoom in and fly around. Interesting stuff.
Population map