I love how historic maps and aerial photos can lead you to stories that surprise and delight you. This post will link the carrier above to the South Boston Waterfront and introduce you to Mapjunction - A historic mapping tool I've been working on for years, in partnership with the Boston Planning and Development Agency. It provides a fast, easy way to understand history by comparing maps and aerial photos throughout Boston and Massachusetts. It runs in any browser, or can even be embedded, as I've done further on in this blog post.





It was by looking at a 1952 aerial photo in Mapjunction that I discovered Boston's fleet of mothballed aircraft carriers. The escort carrier USS Bougue, shown above as a 3D model in The World of Warships , will serve as a visual reminder as we explore the history of the South Boston Waterfront.

This post begins with a man walking in a man-made limestone cavern in Lenexa, Kansas.

He retrieves a metal can containing a roll of original 9" square aerial photo negatives taken by the US Government over Boston in 1952.

The man works for the National Archives (Headquarters in Washington shown above) and he's now sending these negatives to the giant facility in College Park, Maryland, where our agent, Joe McCary of Photo Response will don white gloves and scan these negatives for our historic mapping system called www.mapjunction.com