Vintage Aerial Views of Bedford County: A Look Back at Home
By Phil Leber ’59
A fascinating website offers a unique glimpse into Bedford County as it looked more than five decades ago. Featuring vintage aerial photographs from as far back as 1969, the site captures homes, farms, outbuildings, landscapes, and other familiar features that may bring back memories for members of our alumni community.
It presents pictures along with mini-maps to assist in searching locations with thousands of pictures for Bedford Co alone. And if appealing, these pictures can be purchased. I often regret that there were so many scenes of our farm life that we never captured on film (shots of the milk parlor, favorite cows & picnic area, mom hanging wash, etc.), but this site offers sentimental snapshots of the home surroundings during earlier years. Many of us left our home communities after high school, some of us by a couple miles, and others by a couple thousand. After living on a farm near Salemville during grade and high school, my family migrated to California with visits to Morrisons Cove quite rare for the following 20 years. But when we finally visited the old homestead, so many changes had occurred. Gone was the old barn, house, chicken coup, smoke house, etc. It also was a trip to look at the website’s photos of our neighbors’ places (Musselman’s, many Kagarises, Detwilers Dairy, more), most of which we were quite familiar. These pictures provide a sentimental view of those days gone by. Give it a try – it is surely an exercise you will enjoy!
