Annexation Map
Knowing when your neighborhood was annexed to the city can help you learn what records may be available to tell its story. Follow the three steps below on the city’s Charlotte Explorer to learn what date land was annexed.
Step 1 Scroll down the “layer list” on the right side to “Annexation History.”
Step 2 Click on the box for “Annexation History.”
Step 3 Zoom on the map and click on a location. The annexation history will appear in a box on the left side. Often it will show the effective date of annexation. It will always show the decade in which the annexation was approved.
Maps Showing Neighborhood Boundaries
The Charlotte Mecklenburg Planning Department has no official map showing neighborhood boundaries. Google Maps does show its own unofficial neighborhood boundaries. Do a Google search using your neighborhood’s name. Be aware that some smaller neighborhoods may not be named on the Google map. Some large Google neighborhoods may contain several smaller neighborhoods with their own historic names.
Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps
Sanborn maps show much detail about buildings, including construction materials. They cover the most densely built-up areas inside the city of Charlotte starting in 1885. To access the on-line Sanborn maps for Charlotte (and other US cities) — in color — go to this U.S Library of Congress website.
Tips:
• At the start of each volume is a master map showing what blocks this particular edition covers.
• Near that master map, you’ll find a key to all the informative markings that Sanborn used to describe height, use, materials and so on.
One additional Sanborn map exists, for 1963, only available for in-person use at the Carolina Room of Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.
And by the way, there’s another way to access Sanborns (not in color) via the
resources page of the public library’s home webpage.
Step 1 Scroll down to “Sanborn Maps,” and click on it.
Step 2 Click on “Browse to a location” and click on “Charlotte.”
Step 3 Click anywhere on the current Google map and at the bottom of the page you will see links to every on-line Sanborn map through time that shows that spot.
Step 4 Click on “zoom map” under the “plate” column to load the image of a map.
School Yearbooks
School yearbooks are windows on to local communities, and often have wonderful images. Yearbooks for many of the Mecklenburg County high schools are available online from Digital NC. The Charlotte Mecklenburg Library also has a large collection of yearbooks for schools in the county, including many not available online.
Aerial Photographs
Aerial photographs show in great detail what is in the built environment, and what your neighborhood looks like. There are two online sources of aerial photographs of Mecklenburg County.
The Mecklenburg County Time Machine includes aerial photographs over the span of years from 1938 to the present. The earliest sets of photographs come from 1938, 1951, 1978, and 1980. The website allows for the juxtaposition of two different years for useful comparison. Clicking on the question mark on the top right of the page brings you to a “how to” video.
The second source is Mecklenburg County Aerial Photographs from 1938 from the US Department of Agriculture Photograph Collection, State Archives of North Carolina. The advantage of this site is that the images are at an extremely high resolution showing lots of detail and these images can be downloaded to your computer. There is an index that describes the focus of each image at the bottom of the collection.
Prints of aerial photographs from 1950 are available at the Robinson Spangler Room of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library. You will need to use them in-person, so check with the librarians there.
Photos from 1955 are available in the Dalton Rare Book Room of the Special Collections unit located the top floor of the Atkins Library at UNC Charlotte. You will need to use them in-person, so check with the librarians there.
