Penn Pilot is an online library of digital historical aerial photography for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  Using the interactive map provided on this website, you can browse, view, and download more than 40,000 photos covering the Commonwealth from 1937 to 1942.

See the state status map for specific counties available.  Counties that are not shaded (and that are not labeled with their name) are not currently available.  No photos will be available for Philadelphia County.

The photos were produced by the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Adjustment Administration (now known as the Farm Service Agency).

The original photos are black-and-white 9” x 9” and 9” x 7” prints with a scale of 1:20,000.  The vegetation condition when flown was “leaf-on.”

You need to have JavaScript enabled.
In the Mozilla browser, go to Tools | Options | Web Features and make certain the Enable JavaScript checkbox is checked.
In the Internet Explorer browser, go to Tools | Internet Options | Security tab | Custom Level button | scroll to the Scripting section | under Active Scripting, click the Enable radio button.

1. Click within a county boundary on the map, or select a county from the drop-down list on the left side of the page.  Note that the counties without names on them are currently unavailable.
2. Click within a city, borough, or township boundary on the map, or select one from the drop-down list on the left.
3. Click anywhere on the locator map.  A new map will appear with modern (circa 1990) aerial images as the background.
   Points representing the approximate centers of the historical photos will be displayed
4. Use the pan, zoom-in, and zoom-out tools to browse the map.
5. Click the Display Historical Photo button, then click a photo center point on the map to display a preview of the historical photo.
6. To save the photo to your download list, click the Add to My Photos button.
7. When you are ready to download the photos in your list, click the View My Photos button.
8. To download a photo, right-mouse click the desired Image Quality (Low, Medium or High) link and select Save Target As (in Internet Explorer) or Save Link As (in Mozilla), then follow your browser’s prompts.

To go back to the state status map, click on the State View button above the Selected county drop-down list on the left side of the page.  Similarly, to go back to the map of the county you have selected, click the Selected County View button.

No, not at this time.  You must select the points and add the photos to your list individually.  We are looking into supporting multiple selections in the future.

No, not at this time.  We are currently looking into more efficient ways to download the files.

Version	Pixels Per Inch (ppi)	Approx. Size (MB)	Comments
low	200	0.7	fastest download
medium	400	2	suitable for most uses
high	800	7.5	original scan resolution

Click the Contact button in the page banner or click the following link

Currently we do not allow the user to turn the roads layer on/off. We wanted to keep the interface controls as simple as possible (designed for non-GIS users). We may consider changing this in future versions of the site.

There are limits on the zoom tools to enhance the usability and performance of the maps.

First, road labeling is not activated until you have zoomed in to a smaller area of the map.  Secondly, in regions with dense road networks, not all labels are displayed in order to make the map easier to read.  Thirdly, some roads in our data do not have names.

You did not click on a photo center (represented by the gold dots). You must click the Display Historical Photo button, and then click on one of the gold dots representing the photo centers. This will open up a separate browser window, displaying a preview of the photo you selected.

No, the images are neither orthorectified, nor georeferenced.  To enable browsing of the collection via a map, the approximate locations of photos were established by georeferencing associated county index sheets and digitizing point locations for each photo from the sheets.

We are unable to handle special orders.  At this time, all data are provided through the Penn Pilot website.

At this time, the georeferenced county index sheets and photo center point datasets are not available for distribution.