A history of Barstow,
since 1947
Postcards, papers and photographs of Barstow from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Prehistoric Native American tribes inhabited the region as long as 3,000 years ago. The Native Americans hunted, fished and gathered turquoise. The indigenous people left hardly any discernible footprints along faint pathways as they traveled up to the Mexican territory to trade goods. The written history of the Mojave Valley dates back to the 1700s and the missionary excursions of Spanish Franciscan friar Francisco Garcés. Garcés followed the earliest faint footpaths to the Mojave River Valley and from there across the desert around Barstow on his way to Spanish missions beyond the mountains of California.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Barstow’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
2 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewYucca Trees on the Mojave Desert,…, 1895: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Famous people from Barstow
See all 19 →
Barstow, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Yucca Trees on the Mojave Desert, near Barstow, California (1895) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (1) and the Library of Congress (4). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.