We have a large collection of photos from flights primarily of Fresno County.
Our earliest flight is from 1937, and we have good county coverage from 1937 through 1998/99.
Much of our aerial photography was acquired as gifts from agencies such as the USDA Soil Conservation Service and CalTrans.
Highlights of the collection:
--Flights of Fresno County from various years between 1937-1998, with varying coverage.
Primarily flown for the USDA Soil Conservation Service/Natural Resources Conservation Service.
--CALTRANS flights of highways in Fresno, Kern, Kings, Madera and Tulare counties in the early 1990s.
--Sierra National Forest (varying coverage): 1952, 1970, and 1976
--Some photos from flights of Madera County and other San Joaquin Valley counties.
Index to Aerial Flights
MALT: Map & Aerial Locator Tool
A spatially enabled, web-based aerial photography & map discovery tool
Currently indexes photos from our collection, including Fresno County flights from 1937-1999, and various flights from neighboring counties. Also indexes photos from Cal Poly SLO library, Kern County Library, and from the California State Lands Commission.
Digitized Photos
Most of the photos indexed in MALT have been digitized and are viewable online via our Digitized Collections.
The digitized Aerial Photographs Collection currently has over 57,000 images.
With the exception of most photos from the California State Lands Commission, use MALT to identify specific photos and follow the link to the digitized version.
Access to Aerial Photos in the Library
If you have identified specific photos using MALT, you can view and download the digitized version from our Digitized Collections following the link in MALT.
If you need to view the print version of photos from our collection, you may request them by the flight year and alpha-numeric photo ID found in MALT (e.g. 1937 13-ABI 58-68)
Note: not all of the items indexed in MALT, or that are in the digitized collection, are owned by the Library: refer to the Owning Institution line in the photo description under the digitized photo image.
• Email Sam Hidde Tripp at hiddetripp@mail.fresnostate.edu with the list of year + photo IDs (e.g. 1937 13-ABI 58-68)
We will make an appointment for you to view the photos once they have been retrieved.
We will usually need at least 1 day (Mon-Fri) to retrieve the physical photos from the collection.
• Aerial photos are for use only in the Map & Aerial Photo Collection area of the 1st floor, north wing of the Library.
Fresno City's Interactive Mapping site has aerial photos from 1992-2015
(2002 coverage goes past Clovis Ave.)
Some older photography is available via Earth Explorer (e.g. Aerial Photo Single Frame dataset)
• You will need to register in order to download, but not to search and view.
GloVis USGS Global Visualization Viewer
Online search and order tool for selected satellite and aerial data.
Access to browse images from the multiple EROS data holdings.
Select an area of interest and view all available browse images within the USGS inventory for the specified location.
From the browse image viewer page, either navigate to view adjacent scene locations or select a new area of interest.
Aerial Photos CSU San Bernardino Library, Water Resources Archives
UC Libraries with Aerial Photo Collections
UC Berkeley Library
UC Davis Library
UCLA Library
UCSB Library
UCSC Library