Quizzed from above
Can you figure out where you are in the continental U.S.—from thousands of feet in the air?
If you’re like me, you’ll fight tooth and nail for a window seat every time you’re preparing to set foot on an airplane. It’s not even primarily for the nap-aiding surface to lean my head against—though that’s definitely a perk—but it’s more to indulge my inner geography geek and take advantage of the completely different view of the world that air travel affords. I especially love trying to match the landscapes I’m flying above with the catalogue of cartographic representations stored in the deepest recesses of my brain through decades of aimlessly poring over maps.
In this story, you can play that game without first needing to wait in an interminable security line just to have your poor, innocent tube of toothpaste deemed problematic and unceremoniously chucked in the garbage. Scroll down to encounter ten snapshots from the windows of various commercial flights across the continental U.S. Clickable links in the accompanying text will draw your focus to specific contextual clues within each image that can help you home in on the answer. See how many locales you can identify from thousands of feet in the air—from the comfort of your own sofa.
1.
A city of nearly 700,000 residents, but no skyscrapers...just a sea of roughly 12-story buildings, broken up by long, leafy, avenues that interrupt an otherwise tidy street grid.
A occupies the foreground, as if to mock the blockier architecture around it. This waterfront accommodation is more well-known, though, for lending its suffix to anything scandalous.
2.
This one covers a lot of territory, and there's a lot going on within it. The prominent, snowcapped and the town at its foot stand out the most, but look nearer to the camera's vantage point for another clue in the rocky ground's .
But if you're especially eagle-eyed, you'll notice, way off in the distance, what looks like it might be the lip of a fairly significant in the earth...
3.
This metropolis hugs an extensive shoreline, punctuated by a military-themed and , among other landmarks.
This city's is famous in its own right for its architecture, a sculpture that's affectionately likened to a legume, and a river that has been known to change colors for certain holidays.
4.
A large town sits on the juncture between snowy plains and an imposing, rugged —the kind of terrain that would probably make for a cool national park. This narrows things down quite a bit if you’ve got a good grasp of U.S. geography, but there are still a few candidates to pick from. So let’s take a closer look…
The town itself seems to be laid out in pretty typical fashion. In the core there’s an orderly grid, while on the outskirts you can see what you’d expect of suburban development patterns. However, if you really squint, you can make out what looks like a substantial of the street grid—like some kind of large complex, or campus, perhaps?
5.
The squiggly-shored community in the foreground looks like a pleasant enough place, with suburban streets curving along the green hills.
Working up the coast from there, a couple of lengthy beaches extend all the way up to a massive . Farther inland, you can just about catch a glimpse of a crop of towering shrouded in the ever-present smog.
6.
A tightly coiled seems to be the dominant feature here, but look a bit closer and you'll notice the funny cluster of in the distance. Up close, those shapes would probably make for a great place to film movies—maybe a western or several.
7.
Here’s an inland city in a mostly flat environment, showing off a downtown encircled by freeways, with not many skyscrapers built prior to the 1950s. Still, that could be a number of cities, so here’s a hint: One of the skyscrapers in is the world headquarters for AT&T.
is the Hutchison Convention Center, named for the state’s first female senator. Just in frame at the other edge of the photo is another corporate clue: This , which hosts professional basketball and hockey, is sponsored by American Airlines, another company that's based in this metro area.
Still stumped? Hopefully you’ve seen The Matrix; the visible in the distance all cross a river that shares its name with a character from that film series.
8.
Land meets a great amount of water, as the day meets its end. Some of the that can be seen here were staging grounds during one of the most consequential naval battles of the War of 1812. Today, vacationing on them is practically a rite of passage for anyone who spends their young adulthood in this state. Note, however, that some of these islands—like —do not belong do the United States.
I’d love to point out some more clues, but alas, the lights from the mega-amusement park crammed onto this of land aren’t quite visible in the dusk.
9.
Once a humble silver mining camp, this quaint nestled in a box canyon still plays up its Wild West roots, though today it attracts a less rowdy crowd to its renowned and film festival.
The highway through the on the other side of Black Bear Pass probably cost a lot of money to build—at least seven figures, you would think.
10.
At first glance, not much stands out about this landscape; it could be plucked from huge swaths of desert throughout the American west. But before you give up, I’d like to point out two things:
- This prominent, snowcapped is the southernmost point that’s over 11,000 feet in elevation in the continental U.S.
- This is much more spectacular when viewed up close. In fact, its rolling landscape of gypsum constitutes one of the nation’s newest national parks.
How many locations were you able to figure out?
If you enjoyed that quiz, here’s another story that will have you guess which U.S. national park you’re in, based on satellite imagery.
If you’re wondering how to build similar story experiences with interactive images, it’s possibly because this story takes advantage of a feature that was brand new at the time the story was created: media layers in ArcGIS Online's Map Viewer. To learn more about how to use media layers with ArcGIS StoryMaps, check out this blog post:
The hint "links" and final answer buttons utilize another great ArcGIS StoryMaps feature: media actions. Read about these interactive narrative-building features in this blog post: