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Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) was carved from the environs of Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, at the height of the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. Originally, the area was a center for cotton production and large mills, but on the eve of World War II, civic leaders sought a US Army initiative that established Redstone and Huntsville Arsenals for the manufacture and stockpile of small solid-fuel rockets and chemical weapons. After...
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Seattle is situated in a region of outstanding scenic beauty, but the forested hills and numerous bodies of water that characterize the city were formidable obstacles to connecting its communities as it grew out from the historic center. Between 1896 and 1930, the city undertook massive landscape regrades, landfills, and waterway cuts to ease movement by land and water. The completion of these efforts allowed for the construction of Seattle's first...
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Evidence of bygone industrial prowess is scattered across Berkshire County in the far west of Massachusetts. Better known now for its four-season tourist attractions like beautiful scenery, cultural venues, and outdoor sports, the region was once home to an industrial base that helped a growing nation meet its needs in textiles, paper, glass, iron, and a variety of other products. The relics - imposing brick buildings just off the main roads - tell...
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Arizona was once just a passage for pioneers headed west for gold, religious freedom, and cheap land. Native Americans had lived in and explored the territory for years, but it was Manifest Destiny and the western expansionist philosophy of the burgeoning US government that created the impetus for better and faster routes across the vast territory with its topographical challenges. In the 1880s, the railroads first booted their way across the landscape,...
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Since the establishment of the California State Board of Forestry in 1885, the mission of the California Division of Forestry has been to protect and preserve natural resources via a focus on resource management and protection of valuable watersheds. From the beginning, pioneers within the communities of San Bernardino County were actively involved in protecting their homes from the ravages of wildfire. In August 1930, San Bernardino County entered...
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Alameda County spans from the shores of the San Francisco Bay to the golden inland hills. Alameda County Fire Department (ACFD) is comprised of multiple consolidated agencies that began joining forces and sharing resources in 1993. Protecting unincorporated county land as well as Ashland, Cherryland, San Lorenzo, Castro Valley, San Leandro, Dublin, Union City, Newark, Emeryville, and the National Laboratories at Livermore and Berkeley, ACFD serves...
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For nearly five decades, some of the United States military's most secretive operations were conducted out of a collection of nondescript buildings at the intersection of State Route 237 and Mathilda Avenue in Sunnyvale, California. The installation was known by a variety of names in its early years: Satellite Test Center, Air Force Satellite Control Facility, the "Blue Cube," and Sunnyvale Air Force Station. In July 1986, the facility was renamed...
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The first lookouts were rustic camps on mountaintops, where men and women were stationed to keep an eye out for wildfires. As the importance of fire prevention grew, a lookout construction boom resulted in hundreds of cabins and towers being built on Oregon's high points. When aircraft and cameras became more cost-effective and efficient methods of fire detection, many old lookouts were abandoned or removed. Of the many hundreds of lookouts built...
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The story of Reedville, Virginia, is linked to the commercial fishing industry that developed in the late 19th century. In 1874, Elijah Reed transferred his menhaden fishing operation from Brooklin, Maine, to the Chesapeake Bay. He purchased the land on Cockrell's Creek that is now Reedville. The industry flourished, especially in the early part of the 20th century. Today, Reedville is one of the major ports for the landing of commercial fish in the...
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Across America, from big cities to small towns and rural hamlets, there are many stories of challenges, historic events, courageous people, tragedy, and success. Some of the best and most exciting tales may not be well known. Such is the case for the towns of Clifton and Morenci, Arizona. They survived labor strikes, rising and falling copper prices, devastating floods, outlaws and lawlessness, gambling houses, and saloons. All this added to the lore...
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Ten-year-old Willie Hatton was excited to visit his father at the Avondale Mine on the morning of September 6, 1869. Sadly, Willie would die in his father's arms that day, and so would 108 other miners, all victims of a horrific fire that tore through the shaft, trapping the men and boys and blocking the only exit. The communities of the Wyoming Valley know firsthand the human cost of the anthracite industry. From a cave-in at Twin Shaft to an explosion...
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In 1944, A.L. Simon, a sailor at the Norman Naval Air Station, illustrated a booklet, "On the Beach," about Navy life in Norman, Oklahoma. The title he chose reflected the irony of the US Navy establishing two bases in a landlocked prairie town in 1942. The initial activation of the Navy bases (from 1942 to 1945) and their reactivation (from 1952 to 1959) greatly increased the employment rate and economy in Norman, offering locals a much-needed boost...
13) Love Canal
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Love Canal originated in 1894 as part of William T. Love's dream to build a model city and power canal. The neighborhood emerged in the 1970s as an environmental nightmare and harbinger of the worldwide hazardous waste crisis. Photographs in Love Canal tell the story of the community's early development and the subsequent use of the canal by Hooker Electrochemical Company to discard industrial chemical waste from 1942 to 1953. In the late 1970s, the...
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The Hudson River bridges, iconic structures of the New York State Bridge Authority, are the cornerstone of the Mid-Hudson Valley. Opened in 1924, the Bear Mountain Bridge was the first vehicular crossing of the Hudson River, south of Albany. Twentieth-century growth in the Hudson Valley can be traced to each bridge opening, the result of grassroot efforts by local residents. The Mid-Hudson Bridge, named for the region these bridges span, was designated...
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Native American legends from times long ago tell of great floods that covered the earth in the Pacific Northwest. Early fur trappers describe the Willamette River as a sheet of water covering the land as far as the eye can see in the early 1800s. As American settlement of the Oregon Territory began in the 1840s, a great flood carried away many of the new businesses at the base of majestic Willamette Falls. Again and again the rivers rose, inundating...
16) Texas Shipwrecks
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The Texas coastline and offshore waters are flat, shallow, featureless, and filled with shoals. Texas waters are subjected to extreme weather, not just hurricanes and tropical storms but also northers and seasonal gales. This, combined with two centuries of naval warfare off Texas waters, produced many shipwrecks of all sorts, from Spanish treasure fleets to simple working boats. The ships of pirates, navies, cotton traders, immigrants, fishermen,...
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In the 1880s, Seattle became a major coal port in the United States. By 1908, Puget Sound was the third-largest coal port, after New York and Baltimore. For Seattle, the major coal mines were in Issaquah, New Castle, Renton, and Black Diamond, with many other smaller mines throughout King County. Until the petroleum revolution, Seattle exported most of its coal to San Francisco. Because of coal, Seattle became a center for skilled engineers, machinists,...
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Point Pleasant's Silver Bridge, the first eyebar suspension bridge in the United States, was an engineering marvel when it was constructed in 1927 and 1928. Located on US Highway 35, the bridge spanned the Ohio River and linked Point Pleasant, West Virginia, with the towns of Kanauga and Gallipolis, Ohio. For almost 40 years, the structure provided dependable service for travelers in the region. On December 15, 1967, this service came to a dramatic...
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The Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906 is an unparalleled disaster in the history of San Francisco. More than 4.5 square miles of San Francisco burned and crumbled into a windswept desert of desolation. We will see this scene from behind the camera, covering before the earthquake through the fire and into the rebuilding of the city. The waterfront in the east to Golden Gate Park in the west and the marina in the north to Mission District in the south...
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Named after the 40th governor of Louisiana, the Huey P. Long Bridge, just outside of New Orleans in Jefferson Parish, is the longest railroad bridge in the United States. For 15 years after it opened in 1935, it was the longest railroad bridge in the world. Initially conceived in 1892, the "Huey P." was the first bridge to span the deep-draft navigation channel of the lower Mississippi River, opening the path for a southern transcontinental railroad....
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