Pennsylvania's mid-20th-century Route 6 brought together appealing natural environments, historical events, and cultural landscapes. The eastern length of the route crosses an area featuring rolling mountains and tranquil valleys dotted by farms and towns. To the west, Route 6 traverses a more level landscape that also includes lakes. This book presents the 370-mile scenic drive as a destination in itself. It covers the secluded setting of northern Pennsylvania where Route 6 and its towns have experienced minimal changes associated with larger metropolitan regions and interstate highways. As a result, the mid-20th-century landscapes of Route 6 have lingered a little longer. The authors give the reader a peek of a past not entirely swept away.
During World War II, the Los Angeles region underwent rapid industrial growth as Kaiser Steel opened a giant mill in Fontana, and the aircraft giants--North American Aviation, Lockheed, Douglas, and Hughes--expanded with war contracts. The war economy's demographic and ethnic dimensions included women and African Americans entering factory work and troops streaming through Union Station to San Pedro for embarkation. The Zoot Suit Riots defined the tensions between servicemen and the Mexican American community, and the internment of Japanese Americans led to the eventual disappearance of established neighborhoods. The war inspired home front efforts by local civic and academic institutions, by the entertainment industry, and by émigrés from Nazi Germany. It led to the training of civilian corps, rationing, and vigilance for enemy activities. American participation in World War II from 1941 to 1945 energized the region's growing industrial infrastructure and spurred postwar economic and housing development.
In the early twentieth century, there was no better example of a classic American downtown than Los Angeles, and most of its "historic core" has been left intact while recent renovations of the area for residential use and the construction of Disney Hall and the Staples Center are shining a new spotlight on its many pre-1930s Beaux Arts, Art Deco, and Spanish Baroque buildings. Original.
This volume presents a pictorial history of Los Angeles hotels downtown, in Hollywood, and along the Wilshire Boulevard corridor from the late 19th through the mid-20th centuries. By the early 1900s, many hotels, including luxury ones, had been established in downtown Los Angeles to cater to business travelers and tourists. In the late 19th century, after the arrival of the Southern Pacific Railroad, hotels were built to encourage tourism and sell real estate in the agricultural Hollywood area. And with the growth of the motion picture studios in the early decades of the 20th century, grander hotels were erected to accommodate the new industry. As the city expanded westward, luxury and residential hotels were also placed in the Westlake District and along the fashionable Wilshire Boulevard corridor connecting to Beverly Hills.
In June 1854 the Grand Excursion celebrated in festive style the completion of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad to the Mississippi River. Hundreds of dignitaries including newspaper editors and other journalists; politicians; academics, writers and artists; business and industry leaders; and railroad officials were among those who traveled by rail from Chicago to Rock Island, Illinois, then by steamboat to St. Paul in Minnesota Territory. The travelers were shown a region undergoing rapid settlement by Europeans—an area of great natural beauty offering many promises for additional development. One hundred and fifty years later, the thirteen essays in this volume examine the activities and environments of the 1854 Grand Excursion and place them in the context of an evolving regional identity for the Upper Mississippi River Valley based on the economy, culture, geography, and history of the area. In a series of “excursions,” the contributors explore the building of the Chicago and Rock Island Railroad, eastern newspaper accounts of the 1854 excursion, steamboating, the area’s pictorial landscape, passenger trains along the scenic river, the genesis and features of river towns, the control of the river for navigation, the development of preserves, parks, and recreation areas, the lumber industry, and commercial fishing. The book concludes by examining the resurgence of river-oriented development, as river towns are once again embracing the Mississippi. Generously illustrated with maps, engravings, ephemera, and historic and present-day photographs, Grand Excursions on the Upper Mississippi River will be of interest to tourists and residents of the area, river aficionados, railroad and steamboat history buffs, as well as academics interested in the history, geography, and regional development of the area.
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