Maine - Owls Head (NAID: 45691056, Local Identifier: 26-LG-4-59). One of the things I love most about working at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is that I can always look at records about lighthouses, structures that I have always loved – I spent nearly every summer growing up at my grandmother’s house in … Continue reading From Sea to Shining Sea: Lighthouses of America in the Records of the National Register of Historic Places
Map of the United States and their Territories (National Archives Identifier 6860623). In this time of the Covid-19 pandemic, with so many people at home, summer vacation plans on hold or canceled, the future of schools and work in question, staff at the National Archives Electronic Records Division invite you to “see the USA” but … Continue reading National Park Service Passport Handy? Come Tour the Nation’s National Register of Historic Places
Today’s post is written by Daniel Dancis, an Archivist in the Textual Records Branch at the National Archives in College Park, MD. The name itself conjures up visions of handcuffs, underwater submersions, and impossible escapes. For just a moment imagine yourself in a large theater in the early 1900s. From the upper balcony, surrounded by … Continue reading Searching for Houdini
Today’s post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver. Nearly 50 years ago on June 29, 1967 an airplane landed at Hall’s Crossing near the upper end of Utah’s Lake Powell. On hand to meet the plane was San Juan County Commissioner Calvin Black who presented two Navajo blankets to … Continue reading Concrete and Canyons: Senator Robert Kennedy’s 1967 Family Vacation
Today’s post is written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives in Denver. The scourge of road trip vacations. The bane of work commutes. Chances are every person who drives has a recent complaint or two about road construction hindering their plans and it’s possible that 79 years ago President Franklin Roosevelt too had … Continue reading Detour Ahead: The Paving of the White House Driveway
Today's post was written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver “We can’t get too much science so am for the park.” And so opened a 1962 letter to the National Park Service from Orson Rice, an Ohio resident who owned a parcel of land near the proposed Florissant Fossil Beds National … Continue reading A Tale of Two Tourist Traps: the Creation of Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado
Today’s post was written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver. Campaigns. Dedications. Even family vacations. For one reason or another United States Presidents have found some excuse to visit the American West and scattered throughout the National Archives at Denver holdings are photographs of 11 presidents on just such trips. Some … Continue reading On the Road Again: Presidential Visits to the West, Part I
By David Langbart In April of this year, Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, made a state visit to the United States. In June 1957, Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, then Japan’s prime minister, made a similar visit to the United States. That visit came to symbolize a renewal of the strength of the U.S.-Japan friendship after … Continue reading Golf Diplomacy, 1957
Today's post was written by Cody White, Archivist at the National Archives at Denver. The United States National Park system, its scope and breadth unrivaled in the world, boasts hundreds of parks, monuments, sites, recreation areas, and even the White House within its purview. Saved from development and also federally managed, the most notable geological … Continue reading “In Motion Pictures We Do Not Actually Dynamite the Sheep,” A Brief Look at Hollywood’s Filming History with the National Park Service
Today’s post is written by Cody White, an archivist at the National Archives at Denver. In February 1939, the Superintendent of Carlsbad Caverns National Park Thomas Boles wrote to Robert Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” and Floyd Gibbons’ “Headline Hunter” radio program about what he considered to be an unbelievable story; a ranger had fallen into … Continue reading “Fool Thing to Do;” The True Story of Surviving a Fall Into The Carlsbad Caverns National Park Elevator Shaft
