I found an image online of an aerial view of Orange County, taken back in 1994; I cropped it down to the area of Independence around us, and then cropped the same view from Google satellite images – the resulting comparison is quite interesting:
(click the image for bigger, slower animated, version)
One thing that’s clear is that the Daniel Webster Western Beltway I-429 didn’t exist 20 years ago (the piece here was opened in 2002); also visible is that most of Independence was not built, though the area bottom right in this image was already cleared in 1994. The area left of Lake Speer, to Lake Joval, where our home is built, looks like trees and a few pathways, twenty years ago.
(image created with GIFMaker.me)
M&I / GBMINI 
It’s kinda sad to see so much area covered now but I guess that’s progress and out here in la la land we do that daily.
If you zoom out some, there’s still loads of unbuilt land here; it’s all much less built up than North East Massachusetts!