Thirty miles west of Philadelphia in the historic Brandywine Valley of southeastern Pennsylvania blooms Longwood Gardens, one of the world's great horticultural centers. The original arboretum was planted beginning about 1800 by a Quaker family named Peirce. Industrialist Pierre Samuel du Pont (1870-1954) bought the property in 1906 to save its historic trees and make it a place where he could entertain his friends and the public. For three decades,...

If you didn't sleep through U.S. history class, you've heard of Pickett's Charge. If you've seen the movie Gettysburg, you're familiar with Little Round Top. If you've been to the battlefield, you've seen the Wheatfield. But do you know about the ten or so Confederates buried by accident in Gettysburg National Cemetery? Or about the Union general whose embezzling ways kept his bust from being displayed on his brigade's memorial? Or how that same embezzling...

On August 2, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge shocked the nation by announcing he would not seek reelection. The declaration came from the Black Hills of South Dakota, where Coolidge was vacationing to escape the oppressive Washington summer and to win over politically rebellious farmers. He passed his time at rodeos, fishing, meeting Native American dignitaries and kick-starting the stagnant carving of Mount Rushmore. But scandal was never far away...

The Thousand Islands' very name conjures up images of great natural beauty and nautical wonders. They are forested islands replete with storybook stone castles. Exquisite mahogany runabouts can be seen speeding across the placid surface of the mighty St. Lawrence. Names like Boldt, Bourne, Emery, Lyon, and Pullman are embedded in the Golden Age of the area, and it all comes to life in this pictorial history of the river. Images of America: Wooden...

The river community of Bothell began with the arrival of Columbus Greenleaf and George Wilson in 1870. They staked claims along the Sammamish River after navigating from Seattle across Lake Washington and then east along the meandering Sammamish. Bothell was first a logging community, with several mills producing boards and shingles. After the forests were harvested, it became a farming community, connected to other settlements by the river and, after...

Southern Arkansas University began as a residential agricultural high school, the Third District Agricultural School, in 1909. The school evolved into a junior college, popularly known as Magnolia A&M College, and later into a four-year institution, Southern State College. These four institutions served, primarily, young people of southwest Arkansas and provided extraordinary support to students, often the first in their families to seek degrees....

North Alabama built its first commercial brewery in Huntsville in 1819, three months before the state joined the Union. Before Prohibition in 1915, the region was peppered with numerous saloons, taverns and dance halls. Locals still found ways to get their booze during Prohibition using Tennessee River steamboats and secret tunnels for smuggling. Alabama re-legalized beer in 1937, but it wasn't until 2004, when the grass-roots organization Free the...

The beacon of the historic Cape St. George Lighthouse still guides mariners into Apalachicola Bay. Founded in 1831, the town of Apalachicola took its name from Creek Indians, to whom it signified a land of friendly people. Sheltered from the Gulf of Mexico by a string of barrier islands, the port flourished as the only site in Florida on a river that is navigable for over 300 miles to the fall line at Columbus, Georgia, Apalachicola's sister city....

Fueled by ambition and pipe dreams, Fargo's earliest residents created an entire city out of the dust of a flat, desolate prairie. Roberts Street might not exist if it weren't for Matilda Roberts, a resourceful pioneer wife who encouraged her husband's cousin to set up his law firm on that important downtown thoroughfare. O.J. deLendrecie generated so much success through his retail store that he was able to buy President Theodore Roosevelt's ranch...

Lake Winnebago has a rich history as a major settlement area in the Midwest, and a significant part of its times gone by involved water transportation for both commerce and passengers. Throughout its history, the 137,700-acre lake has been home to six current lighthouses, two navigation lanterns that have long disappeared from the landscape, and one that was scheduled to be built but never came to fruition. History has forgotten a few, but Lighthouses...