Using Same Streets
22,457 stories from old newspapers, pinned to the places they happened. Here is how to find your way around, and how to check anything you read.
Finding things
The search box matches words in headlines and summaries. It also matches by meaning: searching walkout finds stories about strikes even when the word never appears, because the archive understands what the stories are about.
The map is the other way in. Every pin is a story. A solid pin marks a place named in the report — a hotel, a wharf, a street corner. A hollow pin marks a story where only the town is known, so the marker sits on the town centre. You can filter to exact locations only if you want nothing but solid pins.
Only in view narrows the list on the right to whatever is currently on screen. It updates as you pan and zoom, so you can sweep across a county and watch the stories follow.
Reading a story
Every story page shows the newspaper page it came from. Where a detail matters — a name, a date, an amount — read the scan. The summary is an edited account of that page, not a transcription of it, and the scan is the primary source.
Under most stories you will find More like this: other stories the archive considers related by subject rather than by keyword, and often from a different year entirely.
Photographs, maps and ghost towns
The photographs layer collects historic images pinned to the places they show. The old maps are the historical map sheets themselves, which you can browse as a collection.Ghost towns lists the places that formed, boomed and emptied — with the stories the archive holds about each, and the ones still waiting for somebody to write them.
Comments
Anyone can read comments; signing in to write one takes a single click and no password — enter an email address and follow the link. Comments appear under the story they are about, and are moderated. If you see something that should not be there, use the Reportbutton beneath it.
Corrections
If a story misreads its source, the scan is right there to prove it. A correction is genuinely welcome — the archive would rather be right than consistent.
There is more about where the material comes from, and how it is edited, on the about page.