A history of Merced,
since 1889
Postcards, papers and photographs of Merced from public archives, woven together by decade. Neighbors fill in the gaps.
The story
from WikipediaRead it all ↗The first Merced post office opened in 1870. Merced incorporated in 1889.
During World War II, the Merced County fairgrounds were the site of a temporary "assembly center" where Japanese Americans were detained after being removed from their West Coast homes under Executive Order 9066. 4,669 men, women and children from central California (with most coming from Merced County) were confined in the Merced Assembly Center from May 6 to September 15, 1942, when they were transferred to the more permanent Granada internment camp in Colorado.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Timeline
built from the dates on the items belowFinish Merced’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 viewCanal Street, 1880: stand where they stood+15 📦Share a family photoSign in to add one+10Merced, decade by decade
1990s
Then & now
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as Canal Street (1880) and it appears here side by side.
🔁 Retake this view · +15Historic places
National Register · via Wikidata
From Wikimedia Commons (1), the Library of Congress (4) and the National Register (1). Images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.