Browse Items (1289 total)

Full title of image reads, "A new map and profile of the proposed canal from Lake Erie to Hudson River in the State of New York," and several details indicate the project's state of flux. For example, two different routes west of the Genesee River…

This idealized diptych appeared in The Genesee Farmer, an agricultural newspaper, showing its readers the clearing of forests so as to create farmland. By the date of publication, settlement and the "Pioneer" figure already was imbued with mythic…

Removal of trees so as to create farmland, and especially the stumps left behind, was an arduous process for European settlers. Although there were complex (and expensive) "patent machines" available, small farmers trying to remove fairly…

The factory town of Lowell, MA was named after the inventor of a power loom that revolutionized manufacturing and, along with the technology, the structure of work. Owners of the mills employed thousands of people, most of them women called the…

This structure was located on a 1500-acre cantaloupe farm in California's Imperial Valley near the US border with Mexico. Its photographer, Dorothea Lange, was one of the best-known photographers of the New Deal era, often recording poverty amidst…

Influential account of two years lived near Walden Pond, MA by Transcendentalist writer. One recurring theme in the text is the search for a home and its cost, which Thoreau defined as "the amount of what I will call life which is required to be…