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Syracuse University Libraries

Maps and Cartographic resources: Air Photos

Come to the Map Room and travel the world. The collection has cartographic and reference materials in a variety of formats that cover the entire Earth.

New York State Air Photos & DOQs

The most recent Onondaga county digital air photos or digital orthophoto quads (DOQ) for 2018 are available from the New York State GIS Clearinghouse.

Air photo sources

Starting places to find photos and imagery

Air Photo Collection in the Map Room

The Map collection has over 80,000 air photos. The majority of the  collection is of New York state, but there are selected city images from the 50's and 60's.

New York State - coverage for most counties is from 1938 to 1960. Please see the list attached to the air photo cabinet in the map room for specific counties and dates. Mosaic indexes for these flights are kept in the map case next to the air photo cabinets

New York State Pre-WW II air photo coverage for 25 of the 62 counties (1937-42). See the PDF coverage map below.

Susquehanna Watershed Project - The Map Collection has coverage for the counties flown in this 1936/37 that cover the Susquehanna Watershed in New York State. See the PDF coverage map below.

Antarctica - Operation High Jump (1946-7) and Windmill (1947-8) - The map collection has an extensive collection of vertical, left and right oblique aerial photographic flights from Operation High Jump. These flights cover the first aerial survey of the coastline of Antarctica.

The map collection also has aerial coverage for the City of Syracuse from 1926 flown by the Air Map Corporation of America. This is the first aerial photographic coverage ever done for Syracuse, NY.

Remote sensing imagery sources