SearchResearch Challenge (8/14/24): Finding the earliest aerial photos from your area?

 Photos from the heavens... 

Early aerial photo by Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, aka Nadar, from a hot air balloon.
Near Montmartre, Paris, 1866. P/C Wikimedia.

... can reveal marvelous things.  Here's a 19th century white horse depicting King George carved into the hillside in southeast England. 

Osmington White Horse from 1808.  P/C/ Google Earth (2024)

As we saw last week, it's possible to find aerial photos of a particular region, but often tricky to find ones that are exactly of the place you want, and taken at the time you want.  

The Uffington White Horse was created some time between 1380 and 550 BC,
during the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age. P/C Wikimedia A recent photo
of an ancient image. 

In searching for the shellmounds of the San Francisco Bay Area, I was constantly looking at images that were close... but not quite on target.  Or I was looking at images that were a decade too late for the traces I was seeking.  

I bet I'm not the only person with this issue.  So let's do some collective problem-solving on this and figure out... 

1. What's the best way to find the earliest possible aerial photos taken of some area?  As we work on this, tell us how you found the earliest aerial images of the place where you live (Vancouver Island, Mexico City, Portugal, Rio de Janeiro, etc.)  

I wanted early aerial images of the area close to Stanford, Palo Alto, and Mountain View.  I found some.  More importantly: What lessons should we learn about finding aerial photos?  IS there a general method for finding historic aerial imagery?  Or does every place have it's own special and particular story?  

Let us know in the comment thread below.  

Keep searching!