2026 study Vintage

Every house in 1920

Phoebus demo layout, Marengo County, Alabama. The 1920 USDA soil map of the county against today's imagery and the 2020 lidar.

In 1920 the Bureau of Soils mapped Marengo County at an inch to the mile, and the field parties drew a black square for every house they passed. This is that sheet over the Phoebus ground, then the same ground today. Most of those houses are gone. Most of the roads are not.

The old map

Then and now

	1920	Today

Look closer

Spyglass on the old map

Spyglass size--

Gone since 1920 Still here New since 1920 Old line work

The 1820s survey

Section grid and land patents

How it was read

Houses are the solid squares on the 1920 sheet, read by shape with the place lettering and the county line left out. A house counts as still there when a FEMA USA Structures building stands within 75 m today; the fit of the sheet is good to about 60 m. Roads: every TNM road was laid on the 1920 sheet and checked for the old cased road under it. Roads that are gone were taken from the 1937 highway map and kept only where the 1920 sheet shows them too, so the gone miles are a floor and the share still in use is a ceiling. Everything is counted on the part of the AOI plus a mile that the 1920 sheet prints; north of the Hale County line the sheet is blank.

Loading the 1920 sheet

House gone House still there Road gone Road still in use Road new Building new Inverter block 1920 line work