It’s tough to talk tech without talking about maps. The almighty Maps app has become a core part of day-to-day life for so many of us these days—but for all the helpful features those apps have, there’s one layer they’ve never fully offered.
Today, I want to introduce you to a truly cool tool I encountered that gives you a time-traveling pass to rewind any map in front of you and uncover all the hidden history behind it.
It’s fascinating, eye-opening, and also just a ton of fun to explore.
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Meet your new Maps time machine
To quote the wise time-traveling philosopher Dr. Emmett Brown: “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
My friend and fellow navigator, allow me to introduce you to the aptly named Pastmaps.
➜ Pastmaps is a website that lets you peel back the surface of a city and see what it looked like decades, sometimes even centuries ago—down to the specific street you’re standing on.
⌚ You can start exploring it in as little as a minute or two.
✅ Just pull up Pastmaps in any browser, on any device you’re using, and type any city name you like into the box in the center of the screen. (For now, Pastmaps is limited to U.S. cities. Hopefully, it’ll expand even further with time.)
Select the city you want from the list of suggestions, and Pastmaps will show you a sprawling list of historical maps for that area.
Now, just pick the specific map you want to explore, and that’s when the real magic begins: Pastmaps will give you a detailed, interactive view of the city in that era, and you can use the opacity slider at the top of the screen to fade between that past view and a current view of the same area today.
It’s a really interesting way to see how your hometown—or any available city—has evolved over time, whether you’re looking at the street where you live or work or any other location.
And once you’ve peeled back those layers and uncovered history’s hidden terrain, you’ll never look at your modern-day navigation the same way again.
- Pastmaps is completely web-based, with no downloads or installations required.
- It’s free to use for an unspecified “limited” number of maps per week. If you really get into it and want unlimited access and other advanced tools, you can pay a dollar a week (annually) for full access—but for most casual use, the free plan will be more than enough.
- The site doesn’t require any sign-ins or personal info for its standard free access.
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