Cartographic

Aerial Photography in Record Group 114: Records of the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Special List 25

Aerial photographs for RG 114: Records of the Natural Resources Conservation Service are in the series Aerial Photography of the Soil Conservation Service, 1934 - 1954. Like other series of domestic photographs, you begin the search for these by using Special List 25, available for download digitally here and in the Cartographic Research Room.

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Special List 25, RG 114 Aerial Photography, Taylor County, TX

 

Indexes are filed by state and county. When searching Special List 25 for your county of interest, you will see a list of years and projects. Most of these indexes are scanned and available digitally at RG 114: Indexes for Aerial Photography of the Soil Conservation Service, 1934 - 1954.

You can search the National Archives Catalog to see if the indexes are available for a specific county by following these instructions:

Step 1: Navigate to catalog.archives.gov.

Step 2: Click on the "Advanced Search" button next to the main search bar.

Step 3: Enter the following search data:

Search Term: Enter "Year County Name (or Project), State". You can also just enter the county and state if you want to see all available indexes for that county.

Record Group: Enter "114"

Level of Descriptions: Select "File Unit"

Location of Archival Materials: Search "Cartographic" and select "National Archives II, Cartographic"

Scroll to the bottom of the search page and click "Search".

RG 114 Catalog Search 1

RG 114 Catalog Search 2

RG 114 Catalog Search 3

 

You will then see the search results for the available indexes:

RG 114 Catalog Search 4

 

Step 4: Click on the file unit from the search results.

RG 114 Aerial Catalog Search 6

 

Step 5: Click on the "Search within this file unit" button. This will bring up all of the digitized sheets for the file unit. You can sort by "Title (Alphabetically, A-Z)" or "NARA ID (Lowest First)" to see the indexes in order.

RG 114 Aerials Catalog Search 7

 

You can then click on each sheet to view it.

RG 114 Aerial Catalog Search 8

You can hover the mouse over the scan and click the "Click to interact" button or the plus button in the upper left hand side to zoom in on the image. You can download the scans by clicking the download button to the left under the image.

 

The indexes for the RG 114 photography are photomosaics. You can search the index to find your area of interest.

You can search the index for your area of interest. The symbol, roll and exposure on the frame creates a citation which can be used to locate the film can where the photographs are held (ex: CLO-7-31).

RG 114, aerial indexes, Taylor County, Texas, 1940, CLO, Sheet 2 zoom in

 

Information about the photographs, including the state, county, project and symbol, can be found on the index.

RG 114, aerial indexes, Taylor County, Texas, 1940, CLO, Sheet 2 project information

 

The symbol, roll and frame numbers can be searched in the RG 114 Can Locator, available digitally onsite.

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RG 114, Aerial Photography, Can Locator

In this case, the photographs for CLO-7 would be on film can DN137, which is available to view onsite. Cans with an “ON” identifier are original negatives which are stored at the Lenexa Federal Records Center. These cans can be ordered in the Cartographic Research Room and arrive within three business days. If you already have a researcher card, you can order ON cans ahead of your visit to our site. Some ON cans for this record group are onsite and these are noted in the can locator. Cans with a “DN” identifier can be ordered and viewed onsite.

Once you order the cans at our facility, you can view and copy them in the Cartographic Research Room. We have light tables which allow you to view the film and take photographs on a personal camera. We also have aerial film scanners available. If you have a USB capable laptop, you can bring it to our research room and scan the photographs to your computer. You can learn more about aerial film reproductions here.

 

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RG 114, Aerial Photography, CLO-7-31, Can DN137

 

If you have any questions about these photographs, you can contact the Cartographic Branch at carto@nara.gov.

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