Photos: Views of York County, Pa., from planes, drones & high places

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The race track in the two photos thus far? You could go to see harness and horse racing there in 1930. It later became a trailer park.

This is a very young Susquehanna High School in the 1950s. The high school came as part of the consolidations of York County and other Pennsylvania schools in the 1950s.

This bird's-eye view gives an idea of the size of the Central York High School and its campus. At ground level, you can't take this all in. But this aerial view gives you better sense.

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East Berlin’s Dale E. Brenner has provided this aerial photo of the King's Mill/Schmidt & Ault/Smurfit-Stone complex beside the Codorus Creek from about 15 years ago. Since then, York College of Pennsylvania has rehabbed part of the site, which is no longer used for papermaking or other uses. Among other things, this interesting photo shows York College's movement toward the western part of York City, with the Penn Street Bridge serving as a connector. That's a good thing for the city. Dale Brenner sent this photo to York Town Square after a request went out for old photos of Schmidt & Ault signage.

This 1990s aerial photo from York, Pa., Daily Record/Sunday News files shows the Delco Centre, right center, an enclosed mall, before it became Delco Market Place after 'demalling,' a post-2000 trend. A YDR story explained that to de-mall a mall, developers turn the shopping center inside out, designing stores so they face outward rather than inside. Plans call for a similar process to take place at the West Manchester Mall, left center. The YDR story noted that such a trend has already started at the early 1980s West Manchester Mall. Walmart is a standalone store.

At York Town Square, we like serendipity. When we ran across this aerial photo of the Starbucks roasting plant in East Manchester Township (top), we knew it would perk interest. Actually, we put this out in an early recognition of Starbucks anniversary of its opening in York County, 20 years old in 2015. The coffee seller opened its 375,000-square-foot roasting plant in September 1995. A caption with this YDR file photo from 1995 points out Board Road in the foreground, Maple Press, left, and Motor Technology, right.

This aerial photograph of Wrightsville, its bridges and the Susquehanna River is a two-fer. You get a view of all this, particularly the two parallel bridges linking Wrightsville and Columbia when the Veterans Memorial Bridge was dedicated in 1930. The new bridge, standing today, is on the downstream side. Its neighbor, an iron bridge, was scrapped in the 1960s, but its piers remain. But here's the neatest thing about this photograph, from a dedication bridge dedication booklet.

Scott Mingus of York took a rare photograph of Wrightsville in 1930 and turned it into a history lesson about the Civil War. See the original photograph on this post: Battle of Wrightsville – rare photograph of the battlefield. An check out Scott’s explanation on his Cannonball blog post: 1930 Wrightsville photo shows old battlefield from the Gettysburg Campaign.

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Where was the bird flying to get this photo? The answer: In Gettysburg, near the cupola at the Lutheran theological seminary.

This aerial map, courtesy of Penn Pilot, shows York in 1937. Notice the horse track at the York Fairgrounds at left. York's Continental Square can be located by tracing the major north/south route (George Street) to where it intersects with the major east/west route, now 462, in the right, center part of the photograph.

Ever wonder about the view up the hill west of the Mount Rose Interchange in I-83? Here it is, but this view has changed as work has progressed at the busy interchange.

The York, Pa., Daily Record’s Jason Plotkin’s photos from above the Norman Wood Bridge are telling for several reasons. With a Susquehanna River bed like that, it’s obvious why the river over the centuries could not be navigated – or at least navigated by flatboats only in certain rainy seasons. It’s also why canals had to be put in on both sides of the river so that farmers and merchants could get their goods to market on the Chesapeake Bay. From above, other perspectives about the one-mile-wide river come to mind.

submitted for jim's blog air view lancaster-york intercounty bridge, showing columbia and wrightsville, dedicated november 11, 1930.

Brunner's Island on the Susquehanna River near York Haven in northeastern York County and its power plant is mostly under water when Tropical Storm Agnes hit in 1972.

The Susquehanna River's Safe Harbor Dam has quite a weight to bear after Agnes' rain hit in 1972.

Tropical Storm Agnes tested Indian Rock Dam in 1972. The dam, finished in 1942, passed the test. And it's well inspected and ready for the next flood - something that is on the minds of many in light of recent issues with the Oroville, CA, dam spillway.

The view from above York, Pa., courtesy of a drone, brings you photographs of the familiar. That’s Santander Stadium at 12 o’clock. But it also brings views that are far from known, below.

The YDR’s Gordon Rago, who received these photos, wasn’t absolutely sure about this structure, shrouded by trees off Loucks Mill Road near the Metso plant. ‘Looks to be an abandoned, wooden section of a railway,’ he wrote in an email. York will be 275 years old next year. So there are a lot of known and unknown scenes all over this vintage city.

This is the bird's-eye view of the City of York in the mid-1960s. To get you oriented, the smokestack at bottom marks the spot of the old East Philadelphia Street Met-Ed steam plant that will become of the home of the new York County History Center.

Yorktowne Homes in northwest York are seen soon after their World War II-era construction. This aerial view by J. David Allen, who took many such bird’s-eye photographs in those days, appeared in a York (Pa.) Chamber of Commerce publication in 1950. Notice the rural nature of this section of York, often associated today with the Fireside Park neighbhorhood.

For years, The Gazette and Daily produced annual calendars with interesting photographs from around York County, Pa. This aerial scene from the calendar's November 1970 entry shows a photograph overlooking the J.C. Johnson farm in Hopewell Township, east of Stewartstown in southeastern York County. At that time, the land was a third-generation farm. In these years, the movement of Marylanders to southern York County was beginning to pick up speed. Interstate 83, opening in 1959, spurred the so-called Maryland Migration. Still the calendar caption writer was able to say, "Beautiful York County has been made more beautiful by the foresight of the soil conservation pioneers of the Roosevelt era and the farmers who carry out their precepts." Also, this would be the last calendar that The Gazette and Daily produced.

In the borough of Felton in southeastern York County, you're either going up a hill or down a hill. This image comes from atop one of its hills.

The 1930 bridge crosses the Susquehanna River alongside the "bridgeless" piers, originally constructed in 1930. Three bridges sat on those piers, the last one coming down in the 1960s, sold for scrap.

There was snow on the slopes of Roundtop Mountain Resort when York, Pa., Daily Record/Sunday News photographer Chris Dunn captured this aerial photograph in early February. Fortunately, the resort, formerly known as Ski Roundtop, offers a host of other recreational opportunities.This photograph is looking north toward triangle-shaped York County's northern tip, a region dominated by hills and mountains. That range includes York County's highest peak, Stone Head, about 3.5 miles southwest of Dillsburg. (Click on photo to enlarge.)