History of the Collection
The Humboldt County Department of Public Works had an extensive collection of historical aerial photographs of areas within Humboldt County for various years from 1931 to 2002. Starting in 2005, county-wide aerial imagery became available in digital format at the Humboldt GIS Portal. Aerial photographs are collected by aircraft and provide a “bird's-eye” view of the ground surface. These photographs are a valuable resource for documenting changes to landscapes and community development. The Humboldt County Aerial Photograph Collection contains over 40,000 hard-copy photographs and map indexes.
Efforts to compile the Public Works’ collection of hard-copy aerial photographs and other historical materials were led by Don Tuttle, who began working for Public Works in 1972, retired in 2002, and continued working on special projects and sharing his vast historical knowledge until his death in 2020. Don was highly regarded for being kind, good-natured, practical, and ready to help research questions about Humboldt County history. Don had a passion for searching old maps, photographs, newspapers, and documents to discover clues for determining when and where certain events happened. Andrea Tuttle established a fund at Humboldt Area Foundation to support the archiving and digitizing of the historical materials collected by Don during his tenure with the county and making these materials available to the public at no charge. Cal Poly Humboldt Library is thankful to the Tuttle Family for their generosity of making the collection publicly available.
Site Development and AI Transparency
The Humboldt Aerial Photo Finder was created by Brianne Hagen, in partnership and with feedback from Carly Marino. Collection staff and colleagues also contributed subject knowledge, testing, and feedback.
Generative artificial intelligence tools assisted with portions of the technical work, including drafting and revising code, troubleshooting, developing data-processing scripts, and refining interface features and documentation. These tools operated under human direction and did not independently determine the project’s goals, metadata practices, or interpretation of the collections. AI-generated suggestions and outputs were reviewed and tested before being incorporated into the site.
Metadata displayed by the Finder is harvested from the contributing repositories or created through documented, human-reviewed workflows. Relationships between photographs and indexes are displayed only after human verification. The source repositories remain the authoritative records for the materials.
Rights and Reuse
The Humboldt Aerial Photo Finder provides discovery access to descriptive metadata and thumbnail images from contributing repositories. The availability of an item through this site or its source repository does not, by itself, indicate that the item is in the public domain or free of copyright or other restrictions.
Copyright and reuse conditions may vary among collections and individual items. Users are responsible for evaluating the copyright status of materials and obtaining any permissions required for their intended use. Please consult the linked source-repository record and contact Cal Poly Humboldt Special Collections with questions about publication, reproduction, attribution, or other reuse.
When using materials discovered through this site, please cite the contributing collection, the source repository, and the individual record whenever possible.
Privacy and Browser Storage
The Humboldt Aerial Photo Finder does not require an account. The site uses browser storage to remember whether you have completed or dismissed the tutorial and to retain records you choose to save. This information remains in your browser on your device and is not transmitted to Cal Poly Humboldt by the Finder. You can remove it by clearing your saved records or deleting this site’s browser data.
Search terms and filters may appear in the page address so that a search can be bookmarked or shared. Anyone with a shared search link can see the search terms and filters included in that address.
When you choose “Add information,” the site loads an embedded Google Form. Your browser then connects to Google, and Google may use cookies or similar technologies according to its privacy practices. Information submitted through the form is provided voluntarily and is stored in a staff-controlled Cal Poly Humboldt Google Workspace account for review. Submissions do not automatically alter public metadata.
For more information, see the Google Privacy Policy and Google’s explanation of how it uses cookies.
Contact
For questions about the collection, contact Carly Marino at carly.marino@humboldt.edu.
For questions about this website, contact Brianne Hagen at brianne.hagen@humboldt.edu.