Rochester from Space

This is a view of downtown Rochester, intendend to illustrate the inner loop, a bizarre virtually-unused freeway which encircles the downtown. Running up through about the middle of the picture is the Genesee River. First it passes under the Inner Loop / I-490, which is where "navigation ends" and you're not allowed to pass in your boat. Then there's the Court Street dam, then it passes by the public library and under Broad Street and the abandoned subway. At the top of the picture you can see the high falls (a huge waterfall right in downtown!).

Moving south a little bit, here we can see the area of Rochester called the "South Wedge," which is, as I understand it, the triangular area formed between the Genesee River and I-390 (or is it 490?), with downtown at its upper tip. Supposedly the freeway here follows the old route of the Erie Canal. Below the southwedge, you can see some park land, which I think is Highland Park, terminating on the right at Cobb Hill Reservoir (our water supply!). In the upper right is the railroad switchyard.

In the bottom left of the picture, nestled in the oxbow of the river, is the River Campus of the University of Rochester, where four and I go to school. The large empty area to the right of the UR campus is the Mount Hope cemetary. At the very bottom of the image, just south of Mt. Hope Cemetary, is the UR medical center, where I occassionally eat lunch. Going from right to left (west to east) is Elmwood Ave. Mt. Hope Avenue forms the eastern boundary of Mt. Hope cemetary, so you can make out the intersection of Mt. Hope and Elmwood. That's where we live.

Here, I'll zoom in a bit. Here you can plainly see the UR campus nestled in the bow of the river, to the west of the cemetary. The diagonal line that separates campus from the cemetary is an old railroad right-of-way. You can see the abandoned railway trestle crossing the river to the north of campus. Just cropped out of the picture on the right is the (abandoned) Terrace Building of the (mostly abandoned) psychiatric hospital. On the left, just north of what appears to be a baseball diamond, is the EcoHouse.

Man, this is just crying out to be attached to a point-and-click geographic wiki!

These pictures are from terraserver. If you want much greater awesomeness, try keyhole!