Two neighboring communities were studied to identify regularities in the historical land use changes in small rural areas bordering the former "iron curtain”. The both areas are located under similar natural conditions on the Šumava plains. Using various analytic data, there were 19 classes of natural landscape units distinguished here. The set of three historical land use maps for 1829 – 1840, 1935 – 1938 and 2002 at the scale of 1 : 10 000 was completed using old surveys, cadastral records and recent orthophotomap. Geographical data processing using GIS software was focused on the data sets describing the land use changes in individual classes of natural landscape units. Regardless of different starting conditions of land use in 19th century caused most likely by different economic orientation of local communities in neighboring countries and without respect to the political pre-ware tensions in 1930s, the after-war development of land use led to very similar states governing the present situation on the both sides of the border. Surprisingly, combining the different natural, economic and social preconditions formed not only the common similar general landscape view, but also similar land use pattern in the most classes of natural landscape units.