1976 Map of Salem SW

About this map

The Strawberry River carves through this portion of Fulton County, defining a landscape of varied agricultural clearings and dense timber. This orthophotoquad, produced from 1976 aerial imagery, reveals the rural spatial arrangement of the Ozarks during the late twentieth century. Tiny clusters of development at Bexar and Union represent the primary points of settlement, appearing as modest crossroads surrounded by a patchwork of small fields. Unlike traditional topographic maps, this imagery provides a direct look at the actual land cover and fence lines as they existed decades ago, capturing the specific texture of the hills and bottomlands before modern reforestation or land-use changes altered these small rural communities.