Online time machine...

[daglob]

No. not the Wayback Machine. This site has old aerial photography.  Put you zip code in the search pane, search, and if you aren't in one of the light green areas, you will see a sort-of recent aerial photograph of your city. Along the left hand side it will list the years of pictures they have (1952 is the earliest in my case), along with topographic maps (ever wonder how high your house is above sea level?). It has an annoying "copyright" all label over the pic, but you can usually see a lot. I got a free account, and that didn't change. If you order a picture from them, I assume they are free from this annoyance.

A note on topo maps: they often have roads on them the way they were when the topos were made.

Still, a lot of fun.

http://www.historicaerials.com/