Petiar.sk: Google Sightseeing

Today is Groundhog Day, a North American festival which reckons that “if a groundhog emerges from its burrow on this day and fails to see its shadow because the weather is cloudy, winter will soon end. If the groundhog sees its shadow because the weather is bright and clear, it will be frightened and run back into its hole, and the winter will continue for six more weeks.”

So in celebration, we’re posting Woodstock, Illinois, the location where most of the scenes from the excellent Bill Murray comedy of the same name were filmed (although it was actually set in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania). And yes, in our thumbnail of the town square you can actually see “Gobbler’s Knob”…

For fans of the movie, the official Woodstock website has a PDF map which identifies all the locations used.

Previously on Google Sightseeing: Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day, Groundhog Day.

Locations: Illinois, Pennsylvania / Categories: Movie Locations

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You're reading an entry from Google Sightseeing, which is copyright © 2012 Alex Turnbull & James Turnbull and must not be reproduced without permission.

The continuing rollout of 45° “birds eye view” images across the globe1 has now revealed a real-life tragedy. On the railroad track near Sanford Avenue in the city of Richmond, California, we can clearly see a corpse lying on the rails.

Camera facing north

The ever increasing resolution of Google’s imagery has continued to reveal greater detail people’s lives – particularly through the Street View imagery – but this is the first time an aerial photgraph of such a graphic nature has been published on the site.

Camera facing west

We can’t be sure about the details of the scene – there’s no sign of injury from this distance – but the number of police officers and vehicles (both marked and unmarked) suggests that this is unlikely to have been a case of accidental death.

Camera facing south

The location however gives us more indication of what might have happened here. This track forms the apex of an area that is known locally as the “Iron Triangle“2. It’s a high crime area in the middle of a city that was in 2007 rated as the 9th most dangerous city in the United States.

There’s nothing to see in the aerial image facing east, but we can have a look from this direction on Street View – of course the imagery was captured on a different day, so nothing is revealed about the crime itself.

Can anyone locate a news report or press release about the incident so we can try and work out what actually happened here? The time stamp on Google Maps claims this image was taken in 2012, but it’s unclear how accurate this is, so a specific date could be hard to pinpoint.

Thanks to @KeirClarke.

1. Here’s a good map of Google’s 45° coverage (by Munden on the Keyhole forums). ↩

2. Named for the three major railroad tracks which surround it (map of boundary). ↩

Locations: California / Categories: 45˚ Imagery, Crowds, Street Views

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In a country renowned for its natural beauty, one of the most spectacular landscapes is found along the Trollstigen (Troll’s path) – a vertiginous road which affords remarkable views of the mountainous scenery. Lucky for us that a Street View car made the journey1 , allowing us to experience some incredible vistas.

We’ll take a tour of Trollstigen2, starting at the bottom where we can see several sections of the road climbing the mountain side.

With very narrow sections, eleven hairpin bends, and an average gradient of 9%, the road could fairly be described as challenging, and long buses and trucks are not allowed on it. The road is also closed by snow for several months of the year.

As we approach the first hairpin, we can see one of the waterfalls that feed the mountain stream which courses through the valley behind us.

By the fourth hairpin we’re starting to rise above the treeline and a second waterfall comes into view.

As we continue upwards we approach a stone bridge with a small parking area for people to admire the waterfall, though for some people the Street View car was apparently more interesting!

While some sections of the road have been widened, others are still very narrow, but the threat of oncoming traffic hasn’t stopped these intrepic cyclists from tackling the ascent.

By the seventh hairpin we start to get glimpses of the views awaiting from the top.3

At the penultimate turn, we can see the road below, and the full majesty of one waterfall …

… while the other cascades right next to us.

At the final hairpin we can see patches of snow on the mountainside across the valley, and the full view of the valley in the embedded Street View at the start of this post.

No more hairpins await us, but the road continues upwards through an increasingly barren landscape.

As we approach the top of the climb there is a parking area, a visitors centre and viewing platform that allows tourists to take in the scenery. While there’s currently a small range of stuff to buy4, there’s actually a new facility under construction which should better cater to the needs to the thousands of people who travel the Trollstigen each year.

After passing this curious monument, the road continues south through a landscape considered (by all except perhaps the most fastidious of virtual tourists), every bit as spectacular as that which we saw on the way up.

Wikipedia has a brief article about Trollstigen, but there’s more detail at the Norway tourism website. Or you can watch a motorcycle tour of the road on YouTube.

1. No doubt the country’s most steel-nerved driver was selected for this task! ↩

2. Bonus points if you can spot a troll in any of the Street View images! ↩

3. Is that the door to a troll’s cave in the rock on the left? ↩

4. You can’t fool me, that’s not a real troll wearing the viking hat. ↩

Locations: Norway / Categories: Natural Landmarks, Street Views

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Here in the United States somewhere (we think, we haven’t checked), we’ve found this random patch of land that we think looks definitely like a duck. We’re not too sure really, but we reckoned you might like it.

So what made this duck-like pattern? Perhaps it was formed by toilet waste falling from a passing aircraft? Perhaps there’s a nearby duck-cave and this marks the entrance? Caves are the perfect place for ducks to hide before launching attacks on the local populace – you know, seeing as how their quacks don’t echo in caves.

As you can see, there’s also a bit of water here (clearly showing the blue colour of the reflected sky)1, so this is very likely the kind of place you’d find viking helmets, especially those badass ones with the horns on.

When Columbus discovered America in 1392, it was named after his daughter, Amerigo – a fitting name for the country that had already given birth to Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb, and Henry Ford, inventor of the first automobile.

In other news, did you know that glass is a high-viscosity liquid at room temperature?

What we’re sure you’re wondering of course, is how we managed to find all these facts on the day that Wikipedia is blacked out in protest against the SOPA and PIPA bills in the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate – and the answer, in the words of Sherlock Holmes is “Elementary, my dear Watson”!

UPDATE: Now that Wikipedia is available again, we’ve checked a couple of the facts in this article, and it appears we might have made, well one or two teeny little mistakes – which just goes to show you how important free information is on the internet.

Without user-submissions and online-references like Wikipedia this site would consist of articles that were all as bad as this one. US citizens – we urge you to petition your members of Congress to put a stop to the ill-conceived SOPA and PIPA bills.

1. If you look really closely you’ll also see the reflection of the satellite that took this image. ↩

Locations: Not Really Sure /

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In the city of College Station in Texas (part-way between Dallas and Houston) there is a scene of apparent disaster, with many burnt-out industrial facilities, collapsed buildings and train cars strewn asunder. However, they are all just simulations found in a pair of the world’s biggest facilities for fire and disaster training – Brayton Fire Training Field and Disaster City.

Operated by the Texas Engineering Extension Service (TEEX – a part of Texas A&M University), these facilities host tens of thousands of emergency responders every year for cutting-edge training programs. At Brayton Fire Training Field there are eleven large-scale training setups which house a total of over 130 different props for different scenarios.

Unfortunately the satellite view doesn’t capture anything actually on fire, though the grainy first-generation Street View images do show a training session in action – we can see a column of smoke rising from one of props, with water or foam being sprayed on it.

However, the satellite images do give us a very clear view of the different props, including the aircraft rescue and firefighting section and oil processing unit.

Here we see additional oil and gas processing mock-ups, including the aerial cooler which is claimed to be the world’s largest burn prop.

There are also props for fires in various transportation modes, such as rail cars, tankers and even a ‘ship’!

In addition to the outdoor props, Brayton has several buildings for training against fires located in indoor and confined space scenarios.

To the south-east of the fire training field, Disaster City has multiple customisable scenarios in each of five different aspects of emergency-response training.

In this area we can see three different partially-collapsed buildings – industrial, strip mall and multipurpose. Each can be easily modified to portray natural or man-made disasters such as bombs, earthquakes and hurricanes. There are also two large rubble piles for training in search-and-rescue techniques in structures that have fully collapsed.

It’s unfortunate that the street view car wasn’t able to drive around this facility. I’m also disappointed that the main street is called Stillwater Road – “Disaster Drive” or “Calamity Crescent” would have been more appropriate!

This section has two more partial-collapses – a house and an office building – and a third rubble pile. In addition there is a passenger train, three cars of which have ‘derailed’ – note the red car near the locomotive which apparently caused the accident!

Finally there are many freight train tank cars in various states of disarray in the hazardous materials training section.

The TEEX website has sections for both Brayton and Disaster City. You can learn more by reading this article about Disaster City, and YouTube has videos about Brayton Fire Field and a tour of Disaster City (part one, part two).

In a similar vein, earlier this year we looked at airport emergency training locations, while in the past we have visited fake villages used by armies for training purposes, the Felix Centre bomb disposal training facility and even the Secret Service’s training centre.

Locations: Texas / Categories: Buildings, Other Vehicles, Street Views, Structures

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We’re well into 2012 now, but exactly when your new year began depends where on the globe you were at the time. Different places celebrated at very different times – in some cases more than a day apart! With that in mind, here’s your guide to the first – and the last – places on Earth that entered 2012.

The first land on Earth that welcomed in the new year was this secluded tropical beach on uninhabited Caroline Island – sorry, Millennium Island, the easternmost outpost of the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. Since Kiribati spans both sides of the 180° meridian, it has decided to push the international Date Line two time zones east to the eastern boundary of the country so that all of its residents operate on the same day. Millennium Island got its new name over a decade ago to commemorate it being the first land on Earth to experience the year 2000.

The first people to celebrate 2012 were the residents of Kiritmati1 (Christmas Island), and the first people that saw sun rise on 1 January 2012 were the 1,200 residents of Kiritimati’s easternmost village, Banana. The first actual sunrise, however, occurred around this remote headland in East Antarctica (not that anyone saw it).

The country of Samoa used to be the last inhabited place on Earth to ring in the new year, but not any more. In an effort to coordinate itself better with regional powers New Zealand and Australia, on 31 December Samoa moved to the other side of the Date Line and jumped ahead a day, meaning the city of Apia was the first national capital to see the new year, an hour after Kiritmati.

Also making the move across the Date Line this year is the tiny New Zealander territory of Tokelau, an hour ahead of Samoa. Tokelau’s seat of government rotates between its three atolls, meaning that easternmost Fakaofo atoll was the first territorial capital to celebrate 2012.

With Samoa moving across the Date Line, the honour of being the last national capital to celebrate the new year is now shared by seven North American cities. Mexico City, Guatemala City, Belmopan (Belize), Tegucigalpa (Honduras), San Salvador (El Salvador), Managua (Nicaragua), and San Jose (Costa Rica) all celebrated 19 hours after Apia. We’ll show you Tegucigalpa as a cheap way to finally cross Honduras off our list of countries visited here at Google Sightseeing!

Six hours later, Alofi (Niue) and Pago Pago (American Samoa) were the last territorial capitals to say goodbye to 2011. Despite being just 50 km (30 mi) from the other half of Samoa, American Samoa is now 25 hours behind it!

Although part of the Tokelau archipelago to the northwest, Swains Island is governed by American Samoa. This open clearing is Taulaga, the only village on Swains and home of the last people on Earth who saw the sun come down on 2011.

As for the last places on Earth to leave 2011 behind, those were the remote, uninhabited United States outposts of Howland and Baker islands, some 26 hours after the people in Tokelau and eastern Kiribati did so. Considering they’re only visited every couple of years by researchers and Coast Guard vessels, it seems unlikely there was any sort of celebration taking place there at the time.

We hope 2012 is a good year for all of you, even if you don’t have as much left of it to enjoy as the American Samoans.2

1. Despite the odd spelling, Kiritimati is pronounced ‘Christmas’ in Gilbertese, the main language of the island. ↩

2. Assuming that pesky Mayan calendar doesn’t wipe us all off the map permanently. ↩

Locations: Antarctica, North America, Polynesia, Samoa, U.S. Insular Areas, U.S. Minor Outlying Islands, Unincorporated territory of the U.S. / Categories: Islands, Weirdness

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Happy New Year! The festive break is over, and we’re all back to work – but there’s still time to pause for a look back at Google Sightseeing in 2011.

Over the course of the year we published 104 new articles, which takes us up to 1,984 total posts. This means we should hopefully pass 2,000 published posts before the site’s seventh anniversary in April of this year.

But back to the highlights of 2011, a year which saw our sixth annual Volcano Week, where we even went off-planet to see the largest volcano in our solar system: Olympus Mons.

We also held our fourth Desert Week, one highlight of which was The Salton Sea, the largest body of water in California and neither a desert nor a sea…

For the rest of this year’s articles, I’ve analysed the analytics, and can now present the top ten posts of 2011 (as voted for by the unique visitors to each post – that’s you lot).

10. One of my personal favourite posts from the year, the Quirky Border Towns of North America taught us that it’s possible to read a book in two countries at once.

9. In November we visited a town built by the Disney corporation: Celebration. The town is full of fun architecture, but we were disappointed to find the “fake weather” machines weren’t pumping out unseasonal snow when Street View drove through.

8. In July, China opened what they claimed to be the “World’s Largest Cross-sea Bridge“, and an anthropomorphised Lake Pontchartrain Causeway took offense. Meanwhile, there was still no contest for the title of World’s Largest Graffiti.

7: Proving that all art is subjective, our collection of Vehicular art from December contained some brilliant, and some truly rubbish attempts at creating artworks from everyday vehicles. For my money, it’s the simple “giant rock crushing a car” that stands out as the greatest artwork here.

6. After Osama Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan in May of 2011, the news was filled with stories and images of his not-at-all-hidden secret compound, which was soon discovered on Google Earth’s satellite imagery. Thanks to the historical imagery in Google Earth we were also able to see how it looked in the past.

5. Our irregular series of abandoned places continued in June with the Ghost Towns of the Palliser Triangle, featuring numerous fascinating little places in the Canadian Prairies that have been left to decay.

4. In April, North Korea Uncovered highlighted some of the most interesting finds from an exhaustive project to document the buildings and structures seen in the highly-secretive country.

3. This year, Google’s Street View service has again continued to expand into further reaches of the globe, and allowed us to live up to our “Why Bother Seeing the World for Real?” strapline – in February we took an awe-inspiring tour of some incredible scenery seen on Street View’s Most Breathtaking Rides, and nobody spent a penny on petrol.

2. In May, we discovered an actual alien spaceship on Street View. Yes, there were doubters, but nobody managed to come up with a suitable explanation for this completely Unidentified Flying Bird.

1. With well over 18,000 unique readers, the far-and-away most popular post of 2011 is perhaps a little easy to predict, as it mentioned both “nude” and “naked” in the title! Fortunately however, instead of something filthy, those 18,000 people were presented with a brilliant and insightful article that explored, um … places with, er … really smutty names (which is we suppose, one of our favourite subjects).

Many thanks to all our readers from the entire Google Sightseeing team: Alex Turnbull, James Turnbull, Noel Ballantyne, Kyle Kusch, Chris Hannigan, Ian Brown and Matt Bucher, as well as guest writers Tom Howder and David Nicol.

Of course, we’ll be doing it all over again in 2012, so make sure you keep reading for the very best in Google Maps, Street View and Google Earth sightseeing, and if you don’t already you should like, totally follow us on twitter too.

You're reading an entry from Google Sightseeing, which is copyright © 2012 Alex Turnbull & James Turnbull and must not be reproduced without permission.

T’was the week before Christmas … which means it must be time for Google Sightseeing to pay our traditional annual visit to some festive locations where the seasonal spirit is in full force. This year we hop in our magic sleigh1 to visit a selection of giant Santa statues, beginning with the world’s biggest in North Pole, Alaska.

We first visited this Santa three years ago but updated Street View imagery gives us a much better look at the bright red 12m tall Saint Nick who is in the process of making his list, and checking it twice. This blog post gives a fascinating glimpse at its origins in Seattle.

Heading to Oxnard, California, we find only the top-half of a Santa who has apparently got a bad headache, judging by the hand position and big frown on his face. Maybe all the cookies, milk and glasses of whisky were too much for him? As vigilant as ever, Google has blurred the faces of the accompanying nutcrackers to protect their identities.

This 6m tall Kris Kringle is actually quite a venerable specimen, having spent 50 years on the top of a candy store before being moved to his current location eight years ago. Read the full story in this blog post or this LA Times article, which includes a slideshow.

The state of Indiana seems to have a particularly fondness for Santa Claus. We first visited the town that bears his name back in 2008, but neglected to show the large statue that sits outside the town hall, surrounded by festive red benches.

Two separate can be spotted (one standing, one sitting) outside a hotel, while on the outskirts of town is a much older statue; in fact it is claimed to be the oldest Santa statue in the world.

It dates to 1935, shortly after the town’s residents realised they lived in a locale with a name that could be exploited for commercial gain. Originally thought to be 7 metres of solid granite, time and weathering have revealed that it is in fact made of concrete! Unfortunately it is too far from the road for early Street Views to give a good view.

Not quite so blurry is the 11m tall Father Christmas found an hour’s drive to the west in Haubstadt.

Roadside America reports that the surrounding derelict buildings have been demolished, leading to fears that this Santa may disappear before too long.

Many businesses adorn their premises with statues of Santa, though generally they’re not quite as disturbing as this one in Fresno, California.

Finally, just to prove that it’s not just the US that has giant Santa statues, in Lyngen, Norway, a large Julenissen2 overlooks the harbour.

If you know of any other giant Santa statues please post them in the comments.

Merry Christmas from all of us at Google Sightseeing!

1. … also known as a Street View car… ↩

2. “Christmas Elf!” ↩

Locations: Alaska, California, Indiana, Norway /

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On the 11th March 2011, 70 kilometres off the east coast of Tōhoku, the most powerful earthquake in the country’s history struck Japan, triggering a powerful tsunami that swept inland up to 10 km, swamping some areas with waves over 40 metres high. The confirmed number of deaths stands at 15,841, with a further 3,485 people still missing over nine months later.1

The earthquake was recorded as magnitude 9, so powerful that Geophysicists have estimated the main Japanese island of Honshu is now 2.4 metres wider that it was before, and that the Earth itself has shifted slightly on its axis.2

In addition to the unbelievably tragic loss of life, the infrastructure of Japan was severely damaged, several nuclear reactors went into meltdown, and over 125,000 buildings were damaged or completely destroyed.

Failed reactors at the Fukushima I nuclear power plant

In an effort to assist people during the crisis, Google almost immediately launched updated satellite imagery of northeastern Japan, followed by two more rounds of additional high resolution imagery. These shocking pictures reveal an utterly destroyed landscape, with ships littering the landscape – having in some places come to rest on top of what few buildings remained standing.3

Ship on a roof, Akahama district, Otsuchi

In Higashimatsushima, the 45 metre Chōkai Maru was lifted over a pier and left aground

Elsewhere trains can be seen with their carriages piled up, having been completely swept from their tracks.

In July Google announced their intention to capture the scope of the destruction through a new initiative to create an interactive digital archive of the area, using Street View. Since then the Street View cars have driven 44,000 kilometres recording high-resolution images, and the new imagery has just been launched, alongside a new website called “Memories for the future“.4

Minamisanriku, August 2011

The website allows users to switch between before and after views of a wide range of affected locations in northeastern Japan. This unique project allows us to see exactly what kind of impact the tsunami has had on the landscape and its people.

Minamisanriku, July 2008

Minamisanriku, August 2011

The transformation is truly shocking. It’s unclear from the images exactly how much work has gone into removing debris, but it is clear that whole communities have been totally erased.

Higashimatsushima, July 2008

Higashimatsushima, July 2011

As Keir Clarke at Google Maps Mania said:

Let’s hope that in a couple of years Google can update the Street View imagery again to show these towns and communities rebuilt and thriving again.

Wikipedia has all the details of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

1. Source: Damage Situation and Police Countermeasures associated with 2011 Tohoku district – off the Pacific Ocean Earthquake” (PDF, 6.9KB) ↩

2. The tsunami continued on to Antarctica and struck the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, where the Google Earth Blog reports that the force of the wave broke off two massive chunks of ice with a combined area of 125 square kilometres – or more than twice the size of New York’s Manhattan Island. ↩

3. Here’s the same building as seen by Street View in October – the ship has been removed, but the building itself is a ruin. ↩

4. In addition to the new imagery and website, Google have added an oft-requested feature – all Street View seen on Google Maps now shows a timestamp in the bottom right hand corner, allowing anyone to see in which month and year a Street View image was taken. ↩

Locations: Japan / Categories: Street Views

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While most people dispose of old vehicle by sending them for scrap or recycling, there are endless opportunities to do something more inventive. Today we take a look at large-scale vehicular art around the world, beginning with Florida’s Airstream Ranch.

While it may look as though 8 large trailers have plummeted nose-first from the sky, they were in fact carefully placed by Frank Bates, who happens to own a nearby RV dealership. Google’s 45-degree imagery gives us a great look at the installation from the air.

This blog post has good images and information about the trailers, and the official website has a bunch of links and a documentary video. The neighbours are less than impressed with this apparent advertising ploy, but Bates is insistent that it is a true piece of art1 inspired by his visit to Cadillac Ranch in Texas

We visited Cadillac Ranch back in the early days of this site. The satellite imagery hasn’t improved, and while there is now a Street View, it’s sadly from the very early low-resolution systems.

We visited Carhenge – another well-known car sculpture – in our Monumental Wannabes post last year. If you have a few hundred thousand dollars to spare apparently it’s now for sale.

We switch modes of transport briefly for a visit to a monument in Santa Rosa, California, that at first glance appears to be a fuzzy obelisk.

Closer observation reveals that it’s actually constructed of bicycle frames – three hundred and forty of them (and one tricycle) according this Wired article. Created by Mark Grieve and Ilana Spector the sculpture is named Cyclisk and stands almost 20m tall.

Google’s newly-released Street View imagery of Belgium allows us to see another bicycle sculpture in the town of Brakel, which is on the route of the Tour of Flanders spring classic race.

Returning to car art, we move to Sydney, Australia, where a large rock appears to have played a key role in a terrible accident involving a red Ford Festiva.

This is actually a sculpture named Still Life With Stone and Car, by artist Jimmie Durham, and it was created through the relatively simple process of, um… dropping a large rock on a car.

Originally placed near the Opera House, the sculpture was later moved to its current location where a pair of signs help dissuade any unknowing passers-by from calling the police to report the accident.

Sadly, this kind of cruel vehicular torture isn’t isolated – in 2009 we visited two places where cars have been impaled in the name of art.

In Toronto this car appears to have been abandoned for so long that it has been reclaimed by nature.

Commonly known as The Garden Car, it is more officially called the Community Vehicular Reclamation Project. More details can be found in this blog post.

Perhaps the most bizarre vehicular artwork can be found in rural Vermont, in the form of a large concrete gorilla holding aloft a Volkswagen Beetle.

The story behind its creation can be found at Roadside America.

To wrap up, a few artworks about which I haven’t been able to find much information. First, another Airstream trailer which has been converted into a spaceship in a park in Sacramento, California.

In Albuquerque an old Chevrolet has been tiled for some reason, and mounted on top of an arch.

And finally, in Geldrop, the Netherlands, a tiny old Fiat 500 has been bronzed and topped with a statue of a girl – the work of artist Carla Rump.

If you know of any other vehicular art, please post it in the comments. I’d particularly be interested to know if anyone from Stockholm knows if this bus-made-of-cars is visible on satellite or Street View. I really wanted to include it in this post but couldn’t find a precise location for it.

1. In 2010 a judge ruled that it did in fact qualify as a work of art. ↩

Locations: Australia, Belgium, California, Florida, Netherlands, New Mexico, Ontario, Texas, Vermont / Categories: Other Vehicles, Street Views, Structures, Weirdness

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Today, it’s the second part of Google Sightseeing’s tour of abandoned stadiums and arenas around the world. No country on Earth has more large arenas and stadiums than the United States, so it’s no surprise that no country has more abandoned venues. There are so many abandoned stadiums in the US that they could fill countless pages; here are just a few of the many.

Unlike the rest of the world, most auto racing in the United States takes place not on road circuits, but on oval speedways contained inside a seated stadium. Almost everyone has heard of legendary oval circuits such as Indianapolis and Daytona, but across the country literally thousands of local speedways dot the landscape.

Take Longhorn Speedway on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. Opened in 1960 as Austin Speed-O-Rama, the quarter-mile track has been dilapidating for over a decade; though not quite long enough to obscure the Budweiser advert on the start-finish line. A few years ago rumours suggested the overgrown facility was purchased by Sandra Bullock and her motorhead ex-husband, but if true, nothing ever came of it.

Lakeside Speedway in Denver, Colorado hosted hundreds of thousands of race fans from 1938 until 1988 – when economic factors and an unfortunate spectator death combined to cause the facility to be shut down. Today, the cracked pavement and ruined grandstands remain, along with a number of cars left on the track.

Middle Georgia Raceway was open for just five years (1966-1971) before it met its demise. Not only was the track home to four top-level NASCAR races during its short life, but it also played host to the 1970 Atlanta International Pop Festival where legends such as Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, and Jethro Tull played to an estimated 500,000 people, which to this day ranks as one of the largest concerts in rock history.

While stock car racing has long been popular in the south, the ‘national pastime’ of the United States is usually considered to be baseball1. One of the most difficult ballparks to play in was Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, home to the Pirates from 1909 to 1970. In the old confines, hitting a home run was a very hard thing to accomplish. Today it’d be pretty easy, as only the outside wall (including the distance markers) remains; most of the structure having been damaged in a 1971 fire. The ball diamond that exists today actually lies beyond the old Forbes outfield, which was on the other side of the wall.

Tiger Stadium was the legendary home of the Detroit Tigers from 1912 to 1999. Despite public outcry and nearly a decade of petition from the general public to preserve the old ballpark, the stadium was finally demolished in 2009, leaving just the field of play and the iconic flagpole behind centre field. Street View shows the pile of rubble left behind by the wrecking crews.

In St. Louis, there have been three separate venues named Busch Stadium. The second Busch closed in 2005, with the third Busch built next door in the old car park. The superstructure of Busch II was removed, and the field was redeveloped as a softball field as in Forbes Field; the rest serves as – you guessed it – the new Busch car park.

Not to be confused with St. Louis’ Busch Stadium is Indianapolis’ Bush Stadium. Built in 1931 for baseball, Bush was converted into a dirt track speedway in 1997 before being abandoned completely in 1999. Like the other Busch, we see that Bush is now also apparently a parking lot, though in a much more depressing sense. Bing Maps’ bird’s-eye view has an even less-flattering view of the derelict structure.

We end our abandoned stadium tour with a stadium that never even made it to completion. In 1986, the city of Sacramento wanted a baseball stadium to complement the ARCO Arena (now Power Balance Pavilion), the home of the NBA’s Kings. While the playing field was dug out, only the foundation of the stadium was ever built.

Today, the unfinished ballpark, rimmed by trees, forms an oasis in the middle of the Pavilion car park. Literally – when it rains, it fills with water!

Read part one of our abandoned stadium tour: Abandoned Stadiums of Europe, South America, and Africa.

1. This summer, we looked at the current stadiums of Major League Baseball. Read our American League and National League articles for tours of far less depressing stadiums! ↩

Locations: California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas / Categories: Abandoned, Stadiums and Sport

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In the mid-1990s Disney took a break from theme-park development and diversified into town-building. The result was a Florida town called Celebration. A short drive from Walt Disney World1 brings us to the community’s welcoming entrance, where the sign gives the first hint of the kind of small-town ideals that await.

Celebration was intended to be a carefully-planned haven for the wholesome family values for which Disney likes to be known. In many ways a throwback to simpler times, it was designed to have a vibrant downtown core which encouraged walking rather than driving, and no mega-malls on the outskirts.

While Disney controlled all aspects of construction they were careful not to make the town part of their brand. This means that you won’t see Mickey Mouse ears anywhere. However a number of residential ‘villages’ surround the downtown area featuring public buildings with somewhat whimsical designs created by prominent architects.

Philip Johnson’s Town Hall is perhaps the most unusual – crowded pillars being a very postmodern take on the imposing columns often used in such buildings.

The Post Office designed by Michael Graves has a toy-like quality to it.

The Bank of America building has a tower with an exterior staircase, while the Sun Trust bank has the air of a 1950s diner.

The retro look was also used for the movie theatre, which is on the waterfront downtown rather than being in an out-of-town shopping complex as is so common in modern urban development.

Market Street can be considered the main ‘Disney Storybook’ street attracting tourists to Celebration. It’s lined with palm trees and buildings with a Caribbean flavour, note also that the lamp-posts all feature the tree-and-bicycle motif from the town sign.

During seasonal festivities the lamp-posts also double as “fake weather” machines. YouTube lets us see the crowds that gather to witness ‘autumn leaves falling‘ and ‘Christmas snow‘, neither of which would normally be seen in this tropical state.

While the town is pedestrian friendly, it was hoped that anyone who needed wheeled transport might consider a ‘neighbourhood electric vehicle’ – battery-powered buggies slightly larger than golf carts. A few can be spotted around the downtown area, and there are many special parking spots for them, but in general it appears that most residents opt for cars.

Once construction was complete, Disney followed through with its initial plan to sell the town to another property investment corporation. Today, Celebration is perceived as a very safe upper-middle-class community, but was rocked in late 2010 when the town’s first murder took place, followed a couple of days later by an unrelated police siege situation which resulted in a suicide. However, given that in general the state of Florida sees 3 murders a day, one in 15 years isn’t a bad record.

You can learn more about Celebration at Wikipedia and the town’s official website.

1. Which was the very first location ever featured here at Google Sightseeing! ↩

Locations: Florida / Categories: Buildings, Other Vehicles, Street Views, Theme Parks, Weirdness

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It’s surprises me that in 6 years of island-themed posts, and our frequently-documented obsession with all things “largest”, that the Google Sightseeing team have yet to feature Greenland1, the largest of all islands.

At its most northerly point Greenland is only 740km from the North Pole, and from there southwards it spans an enormous area – over 2 million km2. Unfortunately that space is largely uninhabitable ice, with the Inuit-majority population recorded at just over 56,000. This makes Greenland the least densely populated dependency or country in the world.

In some of the stitched-together satellite photos you can see Greenland’s huge seasonal shift.

Ittoqqortoormiit, one of Greenland’s most remote towns, has a population of just 469. Coincidentally, this is also the number of people in the world who can correctly pronounce the town’s name.

Having an iceberg sitting outside your bedroom window must be an odd experience.

On the mid-west coast of the island we find Thule Air Base, which is part of the US Air Force’s global early warning system, and their northernmost air base.

In 1968 a B-52 bomber crashed near the base, and there was some debate as to whether all the nuclear warheads were accounted for in the cleanup operation.

Even further north is Siorapaluk, which is the northernmost settlement in Greenland, and the whole of the American continent. During the height of summer the sun will stay in the sky for weeks on end.

Despite the name, Greenland has just one forest at Tasermiut Fjord, north of Nanortalik. After numerous failed attempts at forestry dating back to 1892, these willow and birch trees were planted in 1960 and first successfully harvested in 2005.

Naturally there’s loads of information about Greenland on Wikipedia, but I encourage you to explore the satellite imagery of Greenland’s frozen fjords, as there are some spectacular images to be found.

1. Earlier this week we looked at Greenland’s Warming Island. ↩

Locations: Greenland / Categories: Islands, Natural Landmarks

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The name ‘Zanzibar’ evokes an air of exotic wonder. For thousands of years, this archipelago off the coast of East Africa has been the continent’s gateway to Asia and the Middle East. Over the centuries, great empires such as Sumeria, Persia, Oman, Portugal and Britain either were in contact with, or outright ruled, the island group until independence came in 1963. The following year, Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika on the African mainland to form the modern country of Tanzania. The main island of Zanzibar is Unguja, where two-thirds of the population resides, and the legacies of multiple cultures from around the world can be felt.

Unguja lies just off of the Tanzanian mainland and to the south of its sister island, Pemba. The hilly island is 85 km (53 miles) long and 30 km (19 miles) wide, and is home to about 625,000 residents, most of whom live in the capital, also named Zanzibar.

The heart of Zanzibar City is Stone Town, a densely-packed maze of coral stone buildings and narrow alleyways mixing Arab, Persian, Indian, European, and African architecture. Rock fans may know Stone Town as the birthplace and childhood home of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Stone Town traces its beginnings to the 1830s when Zanzibar was ruled by the Sultanate of Oman, and flourished as one of the major spice trading ports of the entire world. During this time, Zanzibar was the largest global exporter of cloves (and, unfortunately, also a major exporter of slaves until 1876). The streets of Stone Town are too narrow for cars; the alleyways are instead packed with motorcycles and bicycles.

The most-well known landmark in Stone Town is the House of Wonders, the residence of the sultan between 1883 and 1963. Its name came from its status as the first building in the country to have electricity and the first building in all of East Africa to have a mechanical lift1 inside. Adjacent to the House of Wonders is the Old Fort, built by the Omanis in the 16th century; it now houses a cultural centre, performing arena, and shops.

Beyond Stone Town lies the rest of Zanzibar City, known as Ng’ambo (literally “the other side” in Swahili). Here the housing is much more diverse. One unique feature of Ng’ambo are the massive apartment complexes called Plattenbauten that form a giant cross in the heart of the Michenzani neighbourhood. The long concrete buildings were built in the 1970s with aid from East Germany in an urban renewal scheme, but today are falling apart; most units no longer even have plumbing. Elsewhere in the city, we see densely packed houses of corrugated siding typical of urban sprawl in the area (zoom in and you can make out individual pots and pans!)2

Off the west coast of Unguja lies Changuu, or “Prison Island”, so nicknamed because it was originally meant to be a prison; the facilities are still visible today. Instead, it became a quarantine station for yellow fever patients. For the past century, it’s been used as a holiday destination for cottagers and tourists looking to get a peek at the island’s endangered giant tortoises.

Speaking of tourists, dozens of high-end luxury resorts rim the Unguja coast, such as the ornate complex below. The beaches here are long and wide, and diving and ATV rides are popular.

For most locals, however, income still comes from the land and sea, whether it’s growing fields of sugarcane inland or farming seaweed off the east coast. Few places on Earth have such a clash between east and west, rich and poor, as Zanzibar.

1. Or “elevator” in North Americanese. ↩

2. This incredibly high-resolution image is part of the National Geographic African Megaflyover Project, which we’ve covered on the site several times in the past, including the memorable Google Sightseeing Safari. ↩

Locations: United Republic of Tanzania / Categories: Buildings, Islands, World Heritage Sites

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We often hear that global warming and rising sea levels will lead to the disappearance of low-lying islands such as the Maldives. However, climate change is also having the opposite effect – revealing islands that were previously unknown. The most notable example of this is Greenland’s Uunartoq Qeqertaq.

Uunartoq Qeqertaq (Greenlandic for The Warming Island) lies a few hundred metres off the northern tip of Liverpool Land, a peninsula on Greenland’s eastern coast. Virtually all historical observations showed glacial ice connecting the distinctive W-shaped land form to the mainland, and geographers assumed that it was just an extension of the peninsula. Zooming out in Google Maps reveals older imagery with the ice still present.

Within the past few years the ice bridge connecting the island to the mainland melted, revealing a strait of open water. The southern part of the island has a mountainous ridge which casts quite a spectacular shadow!

Controversy surrounds the island, with both sides of the climate debate claiming it as proof that their theories are correct. The first hint that it might be a separate island was published in the 1950s when photographer Ernst Hofer surveyed the area and showed the W shape not linked to the mainland. Those who don’t believe in climate change point to this ‘evidence’ from more than 50 years ago to try to prove that recent changes cannot be blamed on global warming. However others believe that Hofer’s map was inaccurate, with clear errors found in surrounding locations.

Climate change believers blame global warming for the significant and well-documented reduction in ice coverage in the region starting about ten years ago. Uunartoq Qeqertaq was confirmed to be a separate island by explorer Dennis Schmitt in 2005. His observations were supported by a comparison of US Geological Survey images. Google’s images reveal icebergs and interesting striation of ice in one of the bays.

Each arm of the W is several kilometres long and over millennia the rock has been formed by ice into narrow peaks which give a lovely interplay between light and shadow when seen from above.

Controversy continued earlier this year when The Times Atlas of the World published a new map of Greenland. While it correctly showed Uunartoq Qeqertaq as an island, the map also depicted an overall 15% reduction  in ice coverage. This vastly overstated the true decrease (which was about 2%) and gave climate skeptics more ammunition to argue that global warming scientists are incorrect.

Putting aside any debate, as the ice continues to melt we can expect to see more ‘Warming Islands’ appearing off Greenland and in other ice-covered areas of the world. Read more about this story at Science Magazine, and learn more about Uunartoq Qeqertaq at Wikipedia and the New York Times.

Locations: Greenland / Categories: Islands, Natural Landmarks, Shadows

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The Skellig Islands are located 13km of Ireland’s south west Kerry coast. In 1996 Skellig Michael was designated as a UNESCO world heritage site due to the presence of an early religious settlement, which due to the extreme remoteness of the island has remained exceptionally well preserved.

Little Skellig is the smaller of the islands. It is closed to the public and is a important bird sanctuary, home to the world’s second-largest Northern Gannet colony.

Skellig Michael (Sceilig Mhichíl in Irish), or Michael’s Rock is also known as Great Skellig. In the 6th or 7th Century, monks settled here to set up a monastery, drawn by its isolation and remoteness. The only area flat enough to build a monastery was high up on the North peak.

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Access to the monastery is by climbing a stone stair consisting of approximately 650 steps, which rises to 180m above sea level, built entirely by the monks who lived here.

In 1826 two lighthouses were also built on the island. The upper lighthouse was closed in the 1870s, but the lower lighthouse remained open and permanently staffed by three men (and sometimes their families). On the 22nd of April 1987 the lighthouse became fully automated, and the doors were finally closed after 161 years.

During WWII a US Navy Consolidated PB4Y-1 Liberator struck a peak of the island and crashed into the sea. The plane was never been recovered and all hands were lost.

Skellig Michael is managed by the Office of Public Works (OPW) who issue thirteen licences to boat operators to allow them to bring visitors to the island. You can watch Alice Roberts from the BBC show Coast on her visit to Skellig, or if you’re feeling adventurous, more info on travelling to the island is available on WikiTravel.

Locations: Ireland / Categories: Abandoned, Buildings, Islands, Natural Landmarks, World Heritage Sites

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OK, so we’ve really outdone ourselves this year, but better late than never we always say – this year, November is the chosen month for the long-awaited return of Island Week!

Island week originally began broadcasting in August 2006, but in keeping with our plan to keep you guessing when it’s going to pop up (a bit like the The Moving Island of the Grey Monks), Island Week is now in its fourth time slot in five years.

If you’re new to the site, then all you need to know is that we’ll be posting about land masses surrounded by water1 every day this week.

We’ve had some of our best articles published during the previous Island Weeks, so you should definitely spend some time having a read of our island-themed articles.

• Island Week 1 (2006)
• Island Week 2 (2007)
• Island Week 3 (2008)
• Island Week 4 (2009)
• Island Week 5 (2010)

1. Yes, we realise this is a vague theme, but that does give us a lot of material to choose from. ↩

Categories: Islands, Site News

You're reading an entry from Google Sightseeing, which is copyright © 2012 Alex Turnbull & James Turnbull and must not be reproduced without permission.

With our London Olympics preview earlier this week featuring the brand new London Olympic stadium, it seems like a poignant time to explore what happens to these enormous landmarks when time eventually catches up with them. Sometimes they’re rebuilt and sometimes they’re replaced, but some stadiums just get left behind. Today we begin a two-part tour of abandoned stadiums around the world with a look at old arenas in Europe, South America, and Africa.

Above is Estadio Lluís Sitjar in Palma de Mallorca, Spain. Built in 1945, for over half a century the 18,000 seat stadium was the home of football club RCD Mallorca. The stadium has sat unused since 2007, but the word ‘Mallorca‘ can still be plainly seen spelled out in the seats. The field of play, however, is already in a sad state.

On another populous Spanish island, Gran Canaria, lies Estadio Insular, which was the home of UD Las Palmas. Built in the same year as Lluís Sitjar, the 21,000 seater was abandoned four years earlier. Grass and trees are already rooting themselves in the stands, and the walls are covered in graffiti.

Stade des Charmilles in Geneva was the site of five FIFA World Cup games in 1954. Much of the facility was dismantled in 2002 and the field is completely barren, but the grandstands remain in place. In the rival city of Zurich, the demolished Hardturm also hosted World Cup games. Satellite imagery shows the shells of the grandstand are still intact, and Street View shows the rubble surrounding it.

In Germany, Gelsenkirchen’s Parkstadion was the home of the Bundesliga’s Schalke 04 from 1973 to 2001. Since then, about one-half of the seating has been removed, but the rest remains.

The largest abandoned stadium seen on Google Maps is the Estadio Fonte Nova in Salvador, Brazil. Originally built to a capacity of 66,080, the stadium was expanded to a monstrous 110,000 seats in 1971. Tragedy struck Fonte Nova in 2007, when an upper terrace collapsed during a Third Division championship final, killing seven spectators and injuring forty. The stadium was immediately closed. Since this imagery was captured, Fonte Nova has been demolished.

At one point the largest arena in the Czech Republic, Brno’s Stadion Za Lužánkami has sat in state for the past decade. Not only is the old playing field easy to make out, but even the goalposts are still standing. Around the edges, though, trees up to 3 metres high have sprouted in the bleachers.

Not all abandoned stadiums are left to rot. The Dell, the former home of English side Southampton, was redeveloped as a housing estate after its 2001 closure. Not only does the estate retain the shape of the original stadium, but all of the apartment blocks are named for famous Saints players.

Naturally, there aren’t only modern abandoned arenas to be found on Google Maps. The Plaza de Toros in Cartagena, Spain has been abandoned for nearly a century. Built on top of an ancient Roman arena, the location is set to be the home of a new Roman museum. Over in Merida, this ancient amphitheatre dates all the way back to 25 BC. The gladiator pit is exposed in the middle of the arena.

We end the first part of our tour in South Africa, where in Cape Town, Greenpoint Stadium was torn down to make way for the neighbouring Cape Town Stadium in advance of the 2010 World Cup1. Here we see demolition crews working to dismantle the arena. The north grandstand, however, remains standing.

Read part two of our abandoned stadium tour: Abandoned Stadiums of the United States.

1. We toured the stadiums of the 2010 World Cup in June 2010. ↩

Locations: Brazil, Czech Republic, England, Germany, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland / Categories: Abandoned, Stadiums and Sport

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With around 250 days until the start of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, this seems like a good opportunity for a quick preview of the venues that will be used for the 26 different sports. A number of new venues in the ‘Olympic Zone‘ are shown under construction in Google’s satellite imagery dating from June 2010.

The new Olympic Stadium was completed earlier this year and has a capacity of around 80,000 spectators.

After the Olympics and Paralympics are over it will be converted to a football stadium for use by West Ham United who won the right to use it after a controversial court battle with other clubs. The track and field facilities will be retained and the stadium will host the 2017 World Athletics Championships.

The Olympic Zone will be the focal point of the Games and features a number of other new facilities including the Aquatics Centre, the velopark (which includes the velodrome and outdoor road and BMX circuits) and the basketball arena.

While it’s hard to find good Street View images, the elevated section of the A12 gives us a glimpse of the construction site. It reveals the swooping shape of the velodrome and the ridged roof of the basketball arena.

We also get a very distant view of the stadium and Aquatics Centre.

The Zone also includes a handball arena and two hockey stadiums in this area which is shown full of construction materials. A former greyhound racing facility may serve as the media centre for the Games.

The eastern side of the development features the Athletes’ Village – a number of accommodation buildings for the 10,000-plus athletes and their team officials. After the Games they will be taken over by the city of Stratford which is being extensively redeveloped.

Further south, the ‘River Zone’ will feature four venues along the Thames, including the O2 Arena1, which will be used for gymnastics. The Excel Arena will house competition in seven sports including boxing, table tennis and judo. The historic Royal park in Greenwich will host all equestrian events while all shooting events will take place the Royal Artillery Barracks2.

While a number of other pre-existing venues scattered across London will be used for various sports, in some cases the Games organisers are creating venues in non-traditional but iconic locations. For example, a temporary 15,000 seat beach volleyball stadium will be built in Horseguards Parade which normally plays host to the Trooping of the Colour.

The wide green expanse of Lord’s Cricket Ground will be converted to an archery venue with seating for close to 7,000 spectators.

There are several venues outside the city as well, including the Lee Valley White Water Centre which we see here under construction prior to its opening for canoe/kayak events a year ago.

For the past couple of Olympics, Google has released brand-new satellite and Street View imagery shortly before the Games, so we’ll plan to do a more detailed post next summer. If they can do Street View on the slopes at Whistler, I hope the next step forward is to strap a camera to a kayak and send it down the whitewater course!

Read more about the 2012 Olympic venues at Wikipedia and at the London 2012 site.

1. We did an extensive post about the former Millennium Dome a couple of years ago. A ban on non-Olympic corporate sponsors mean it will become the ‘North Greenwich Arena’ for the duration of the Games. ↩

2. The Royal Artillery Barracks may be worth of its own post some day. It has both the longest building facade and the largest parade square in Britain! ↩

Locations: England / Categories: Buildings, Stadiums and Sport, Street Views, Structures

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Inquisitive reader Simon Proffitt alerted us to the Street View imagery in an area near to the Google HQ in Mountain View, California, The overwhelming evidence presented by these images suggest only one possibility: Google is testing top-secret wormhole technology on the streets near their campus.

Simon says he was having a virtual wander around the Google campus (after viewing our link to a huge collection of Street View camera cars), when he became strangely disoriented. Start here:

From here, click the forward arrow (the one at 11 o’clock), and you end up falling out of a wormhole and onto an 8-lane motorway:

Either the jump has messed with your sense of balance or Google is also testing portable gravity wells, because when you try and look around, you can’t stand up properly1.

Try move anywhere on this road and you end up back in Mountain View.

A little bit further down the road Simon also discovered another wormhole. Start on Stierlin Ct, just outside Microsemi:

Now attempt to wander into their car park. Boom, suddenly you’re on a 3-lane road:

But wait, it gets even weirder! Attempt to cross the road, and a wooden walkway appears as if by magic:

If you then click the left arrow to move off down this new road, you’ll be suddenly transported onto an overpass over a completely different stretch of 8-lane motorway:

So when are we likely to see the unveiling of this new futuristic technology, and what might it be used for?

Many thanks to Simon Proffitt for uncovering this exciting news!

1. Weirdly, this tilted view is only present on the actual Google Maps page, and not our embedded map page. ↩

Locations: California / Categories: Street Views, Weirdness

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