MARICOPA COUNTY, Ariz. — A new map can show you how the Valley has changed over the past 100 years, all with a click of a button.
Maricopa County created a webpage that archived aerial photography and satellite images taken since 1930, allowing people to search a specific area and see its' past lives.
"This makes it easy to visualize how a Parcel looked like five, 10 or 20 years ago," the county's site said.
The block that houses Arizona's Capitol was seemingly contained within a man-made forest in 1930. Compare that to today's block with multiple buildings, parking lots and walkways, and you get a much different picture.
The flourishing of downtown Tempe around Arizona State University is also on display through the images.
How big is Maricopa County?
Maricopa County is the United States’ 4th largest county in terms of population with 4,485,414 people, according to the 2020 Census.
The county contains around 63% of Arizona’s population and is 9,224 square miles. That makes the county larger than seven U.S. states (Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey, Massachusetts and New Hampshire).
One of the largest park systems in the nation is also located in Maricopa County. The county has an estimated 120,000 acres of open space parks that includes hundreds of miles of trails, nature centers and campgrounds.
The county’s seat is located in Phoenix, which is also the state capital and the census-designated 5th most populous city in the United States.
The county was named after the Maricopa, or Piipaash, Native American Tribe.
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