There are very few collections of aerial maps available in Treasure Valley libraries. Albertsons Library at Boise State University has a collection of displayed aerial maps. The Community Planning Association of Southwest Idaho provides aerial maps of Ada County by Section, Township, and Range, as well as bikeway maps for Ada County.
The Special Collections Department of Boise State University’s Albertson’s Library has aerial photos of Idaho for the years 1938-1971. A range and township index is also available.
Most aerial maps are available from federal government agencies or commercial photographers. Commercial photographers can be found in the yellow pages of the local phone directory under Aerial Applicators.
The Aerial Photography Field Office, Farm Service Agency is the primary source of aerial imagery for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Over 10,000,000 images are kept at the APFO, dating from 1955 through the present.
The Forest Service is one of six Federal agencies that serve on the steering committee of the National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) administered by the United States Geological Survey (USGS). This program was established to coordinate the acquisition of aerial photography over the United States every 5 years. The Forest Service also owns and operates aircraft, cameras, and sensor systems to acquire information for program activities with critical specifications for resource protection and monitoring.
The National High Altitude Photography (NHAP) program was initiated in 1980 and coordinated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to acquire aerial photography of the 48 conterminous states every five years. In 1987 the program name was changed to the National Aerial Photography Program (NAPP) in recognition of modifications in the user requirements and flight specifications.
While it was the intent of both the NHAP and NAPP programs to acquire complete coverage of the conterminous United States every five years, that has varied somewhat due to budgetary constraints. Nevertheless, these programs do provide nearly complete coverage of the entire United States on a fairly regular basis.
You may search for USGS National Aerial Photography Program Photos by using Earth Explorer.
Aerial maps are photographs more than maps, but are used extensively by cartographers in creating most types of land maps. They are made by photographing areas of land section by section from airplanes. The resulting photographs are corrected to eliminate distortion, camera tilt and optical effects created by the land itself.
Aerial imagery for Idaho can also be viewed in the Idaho Aerial Imagery Explorer from the Inside Idaho Interactive Numeric & Spatial Information Data Engine.
In addition. Aerial maps may be available commercially. One business that sells aerial maps is Historic Aerials.
This page updated by Ronnie Joiner on July 11, 2019.