A Bird's Eye View from 1910

We are truly fortunate to have this photo of early Junction City from high above, and it gives us lots of information as to where many of the buildings that we only have photos of were located. The original photo was made with a large negative, and so we are able to crop in close to see more details. In fact, if you are viewing this on a touchscreen, we've included this at a high resolution so you can zoom in to see everything in detail. If you're on a desktop click the arrow when you hover over the photograph.

Getting a photo from this height was a challenge before the invention of airplanes (or drones), but balloons were often used. The first ones used helium, but when that led to several explosions, photographers and adventurers began to use hot air to raise the balloon. That may have been used to take this photo, but we think a more likely method was to climb to the top of a grain elevator or water tower. Since there was a tall grain elevator at this approximate location (built by James Bushnell) that was probably the method used in this case.

No matter how it was taken, it's a truly valuable record of Junction City at this point of history.

Below are a few cropped versions for you to see details better.