Each edition grades its towns against each other only.
Below: 5 old photos and papers, maps from 1893 on, and the census since 1890.
The Artesian post office opened in 1889, the earliest record of the town by name. Three smaller post offices, Denton (1879), Diana (1883) and Artesian City (1887), opened inside today’s town and later closed.
Read from the archive, the National Register and the record. The page puts what stands out first.
Artesian’s post office has been open since 1889. Three other post offices opened and closed inside today’s town.
US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock, CC0). Places and cemeteries from the USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021).
Peaked at 689 in 1920; 129 people lived here in 2020.
14 censuses, 1890–2020.
U.S. Census Bureau decennial counts, from the census table on Artesian’s Wikipedia page.
Fire insurance maps drew every building, what it was made of and what it was used for, so insurers could price the risk of fire. Pick a year, then a sheet.
1893Sheet 1 of 1Sanborn Map Company, via the Library of Congress. Editions published in 1930 or earlier, which are in the public domain.
From Wikipedia’s history of Artesian.
When the first settlement at Artesian was made in 1883, it was called "Diana". A post office called Diana was established in 1883, the name was changed to Denton, and then to Artesian City in 1887, and again to Artesian in 1889. The present name is for the artesian aquifer and artesian wells near the original town site.
Text from Wikipedia, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Woven from the archive, old maps, post office records, the National Register and the people born here.
In the archiveMain Str. From south
On the mapFirst mapped by the U.S. Geological SurveyOne decade in the archive so far: the 1900s. Scroll each row; tap a photo for its story.
The U.S. Geological Survey’s map of Artesian.
1971Artesian sheet · 1:24,000U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (public domain), via Esri’s collection of the scans. The red ring marks the center of Artesian.
No then-and-now pairs yet. Take a photo from the same spot as an old one and they appear here side by side.
Find the spot, match the angle, and add your photo. It becomes the first then-and-now pair on Artesian’s page.
Retake this view · +15Most archives stop around 1920. The photos from after that are in family albums, not libraries.
The Artesian post office opened in 1889, the earliest record of the town by name (U.S. post office records).
What the archives can’t tell you, neighbors can.
Founding dates: Wikidata, Wikipedia, the U.S. post office records of Blevins & Helbock (CC0) and the Census. Homes by year built: Census ACS 2020–24. National Register of Historic Places: National Park Service (list of May 22, 2026). Old photos, postcards and papers: Wikimedia Commons, the Library of Congress and other public archives, credited on each item’s page. Maps: U.S. Geological Survey historical topographic maps (via Esri) and Sanborn fire-insurance maps (Library of Congress). History text and census tables: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). Places that used to be: USGS Geographic Names Information System (2021). How TownRatings grades history →
From Wikimedia Commons (1), the Library of Congress (5), Wikipedia, U.S. Geological Survey historical maps, U.S. Census counts (via Wikipedia), the US Post Offices dataset (Blevins & Helbock), the USGS Geographic Names Information System and Sanborn fire insurance maps (Library of Congress). Archive images are copied here with their credits and licenses, shown on each photo’s page. Refreshed monthly.
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