Wouldn’t it be nice to see what your area looked like from the air as far back as 1938? Vegetation changes are readily apparent when you compare them to aerial photographs of today. For New York I have found two sources that have old aerial photographs available for viewing on the web. The first is from Cornell University and includes counties from central New York. The second is from a website called historicaerials.com which provides old aerial photographs in the Lower Hudson area and Long Island.
The 6 counties of Central New York are available at: http://aerial-ny.library.cornell.edu/
And Long Island aerials are available at: http://www.historicaerials.com/
Have fun!
The north end of Cayuga lake in 1938