historicaerials.com is a good website for finding out what an area looked like in the past. You just put in the location and scroll through time. Its all free too. Juat thought id share that here for everyone.
This site is especially helpful if you use the compare feature. I put in 1950, compared to 2012. (These are the earliest and latest dates for my area.) Now you are looking at 1950 on the left and 2012 on the right. Now you can hold the left button down on your mouse, and slide to left or right to see the landscape change from then till now. Really useful!!
I have problems with viewing what I want to buy. Damn Silverlight download keeps coming up, and when I download it, the same Silverlight comes up again. I'm not paying forty some dollars for something I don't know what it will look like. Just using what comes up on the screen for now. Quite frankly, good enough for now, and like you said......Free!!