CANYON, TX.- An exhibition of more than 60 views of Texas cities ranging from local communities like Amarillo, Childress, Clarendon, and Quanah, to distant cities like Austin, Victoria, Wichita Falls, Texarkana and El Paso comes to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum Foran Gallery March 17 to June 10, 2007.

From the close of the Civil War until shortly after the turn of the 20th century, a number of artists traveled throughout the United States to create map-like scenes of each state’s burgeoning settlements, towns and cities. These highly detailed and oversized lithographic prints, created by the artists as if seen from high above, came be to known as “bird’s-eye views.”

Between 1871 and 1914, eleven different itinerant artists drew and published at least 67 bird’s-eye views of Texas cities. They had to act as traveling salesmen, securing funding to cover their costs before the views could be drawn and then printed. The most popular method was to secure advance subscriptions, which the artists or their agents offered in every city. The editors of local newspapers were enlisted as allies to sell the idea of a bird’s-eye view as a matter of civic pride. In some instances, banks, real estate firms, and other merchants paid to have their ads printed on the views in the form of small vignettes in the margins. In an age of unprecedented urban growth, the bird’s-eye views served as examples of community boosterism.

The images were drawn by hand using, most often using two-point perspective to produce a three-dimensional rendering. The artist usually began making the city portrait by consulting any available point. If no maps were available, the artist might make one of his own for these purposes. He would then canvas the town, sketching individual buildings from the predetermined direction and converting them to the desired aerial perspective. The artist would then typically make sketches of individual buildings; in other instances, he might sketch whole blocks or areas of the town. The artist might spend several days in the smaller towns and weeks in the larger ones.

The views document the development of the railroads and their seminal influence on the growth of cities and smaller towns throughout the state in the post-Civil War period. In 1870, when some of the earliest views were done, Texas ranked 28th in the nation in the number of miles of railroad track. By 1904, the state ranked first in the nation, with more than 10,000 miles laid during the years that most of the bird’s-eye views were produced. Texas towns were created or invigorated by the arrival of the railroads. Streets and public spaces of a town were laid out to accommodate them, as opposed to earlier towns that depended on a river or an old overland trail for their existence.