A history of Blythe,
then and now
Postcards, papers and photographs of Blythe from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗Blythe was named after Thomas Henry Blythe, a San Francisco businessman and entrepreneur. Blythe established primary water rights to the Colorado River in the southwestern California region in 1877. The town was originally named Blythe City, by Thomas Blythe, but the name was shortened to simply Blythe around the time the first post office was opened in 1908.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Blythe’s story
Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
3 of 10 decades since 1900 have photos 🔁Retake an old viewBlytheCA, c. 1900: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Blythe, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as BlytheCA (c. 1900) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Stories next door
nearby towns’ historyFrom Wikimedia Commons (6). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.