Earliest photos of your neck of the woods you can find

This is Bondi Beach, circa 1875:




And what it looks like today, from roughly the same angle



Not exactly where I live, but finding that first phot is what made me think about this

 

Circular Quay, Sydney 1804:



1900:



Today:




All from roughly same angle

 

my neck of the woods being specifically "the hill" between sacramento california, and sparks nevada, formerly the sacramento devision of the southern pacific railroad, also the i-80 corridor between those points which was prior to the freeways u.s. 40 (the numbers 40 and 80 were swapped when the went from the old u.s. highway system to the interstate freeways).

more specifically the town of colfax california where i lived the longest of my years grown up in the 1950s and 60s, but also auburn where i graduated high school in 1966, and truckee, where i started kindergarten in 1952.

earliest photos that i know of are from railroad museum collections, from the time of the building of the railroad, about a hundred years almost exactly, before i lived there.

http://cprr.org/Museum/Eastward.html

http://gelwood.railfan.net/sp/sp-donss-csa.jpg

http://gelwood.railfan.net/sp/sp-f7pwr-rsa.jpg

http://cprr.org/Museum/Steve_Heselton/_r223.cape_horn_d_sh.html

http://cprr.org/Museum/Steve_Heselton/_r207.trestle_bear_r_sh.html

http://cprr.org/Museum/Steve_Heselton/_r207.trestle_bear_r_d_sh.html

http://cprr.org/Museum/Steve_Heselton/_r201.bearrtrestle_d2_sh.html

http://cprr.org/Museum/Steve_Heselton/_housew780.wagon_rd_d_sh.html

http://cprr.org/Museum/Locomotives/I_ACCEPT_the_User_Agreement/images/hart_90_d.html

http://cprr.org/Museum/Unknowns/Sparks_NE_Roundhouse.html#Panorama

i currently live in sparks, not far from where the old roundhouse used to be. i've also lived on top of donner summit, where the pictures of the snow sheds are from.

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/8362754/

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/5266939/

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/5259638/

http://www.furaffinity.net/view/3955827/

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/3924727/

these last several, from my page on fur affinity, are ones i took myself at the time.

 

1880

 

^^ what city is that Ruby?

 

I don't think we had cameras out this far...

 

Des Moines

 

http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf5489p2dv/?brand=oac4
http://www.oac.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf438nb5qz/?brand=oac4

these are (the same views, the latter being the whole stereo optican card)

of the actual town i grew up in itself. that commerical row you see on the other side of the tracks, was still the entire commercial district of the town. all one side of two blocks of it. strip malls and such have since been built in locations other then those in the photo, but at the time i was growing up there, the 'down town' was essentially unchanged, from the buildings in this view. of course by my time, in the 1950s and 60s, there were cars parked diagonally in front of them.

population in 1959 was less then 1000 persons, somewhere around 940 if i recall the sight correctly.

perhaps i should also point to, http://www.furaffinity.net/full/8362754/

taken by myself, at all of age 11, in 1957, of the last run of a cab forward, the principal heavy steam power on our 'hill'

needless to say, by then the vantage point from which this (the first one in this post, the museum one) photo had been shot, was filled with houses. and a narrow gauge connection, from colfax to grass valley and wakadok, had been built and unbuilt by then. many good historical views are in gerald m best's history of the nevada county narrow gauge railroad.

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/4084052/

is a picture of my dad when he worked in the station in colfax

http://www.furaffinity.net/full/3924727/

and this one taken less then half a mile from the house i was actually living in before graduating high school in 1966.

 

1916 Milwaukee depot






present day

The Milwaukee rail line long defunct, the building now serves as community center and library