The all-seeing eye of Google has invaded Santa Clarita in the form of Street View, the innovative street-level feature that’s very useful, fun to play with, yet a bit creepy.

The search giant impelemented Street View for major cities in May of last year, and since then it’s expanded its catalog of street-level images from major cities to smaller towns around the world.

And now much of Santa Clarita has been covered and is available to viewers the world over using Google Maps and Google Earth.

So what is it exactly? Well, Street View is simply 360 degree photographs from streets in and around Santa Clarita. Much of the SCV is covered now, and one can literally ‘drive’ through Santa Clarita using Street View without ever getting in a car.

I’ll demonstrate. Streets on the map below shrouded in blue are streets that are now covered with Street View. Place the little man icon on any street thats blue, and boom! Up pops a draggable, 360 degree image of what that part of the street looks like if you were standing there.

For instance, if you drag the little man icon to McBean and Valencia, you get this image:

They also made their way up to the Magic Mountain entrance. A photo of the rollercoaster ride X2 reveals this picture was taken sometime after spring, 2008.

They even invaded the private and tony enclaves of Placerita and Sand Canyons. Hi there horsey!

and caught a guy and his dog about that was about to do its business:

For the SCV Chattering Classes, this new tool also offers a great way to demonstrate your point in a debate. For instance, let’s bring up that old divisive issue of the Valley Street gate, which the city implemented around the turn of the century after much hand-wringing in the community. Yes, even Google couldn’t get past this fortification:

What’s really cool about this technology is that it’s so easy to “look around.” Just click the right/left arrows and you can pan 360 degrees around that specific spot on the road.  What’s more, you can also “drive” down the street by clicking the up and down arrows on the grey line that goes down the center of the street.

So when did Google check out Santa Clarita? I’ve looked at scores of locations in the pictures and come to the conclusion that most of the photos seemed to have been taken early in the morning or in the late afternoon, juding by how long the shadows are, the position of the sun, and shadow position. Most seem to have been taken in the spring or summer if foilage is any indication, so these photos represent a pretty recent view of Santa Clarita.

Even though it’s fun and exciting to poke around Santa Clarita with this technology, Street View hasn’t been welcomed everywhere. In some places, homeowners were upset after the Google Street view vehicle drove up their private driveway and photographed homeowners watering flowers. In New Zealand recently, a man was photod while passed out drunk on his lawn.

But the technologies’ usefulness outweighs any privacy concerns in my opinion. I’ve used it many times to get a feel for what a destination looks like. A picture is worth a thousand words after all.

Anyway, enjoy!