The city of Pleasanton, located in the beautiful Amador-Livermore valley, was formed in 1867 when immigrants John Kottinger and Joshua Neal used land from their Californio wives' dowries and laid out a town. Kottinger named the city after Civil War general Alfred Pleasonton, but a postal clerical error changed the spelling to "Pleasanton" and the name stuck. The men secured Pleasanton's future by offering land to the Western Pacific Railroad for a railroad station and landing. Planning for future growth thus became a legacy that is still embraced by this modern city of 70,000 people. Today families and tourists are attracted to Pleasanton's historic downtown, where 19thcentury buildings still stand and people stroll among its many shops and restaurants.
Named by an early settlers wife as she gazed at the lush surroundings of her summer home, Greenwood was incorporated on December 21, 1857. Growing from a fledgling village into a town that at one time boasted the widest Main Street in the world, the city grew due to two industries: the railroad and textiles. Railroad companies such as Piedmont & Northern and Seaboard built their way through Greenwood, while textile tycoons such as James C. Self and John Pope Abney worked hard to increase productivity and job opportunities. Soon, education, businesses, and community services followed suit. Greenwood was booming, making the small town a place of educational advancement, great entrepreneurial spirit, and community-minded individuals.
Houston's firefighting service began in 1838 with the founding of Protection Fire Company No. 1. As the city of Houston grew throughout the early and mid-19th century, volunteer companies formed and grew along with it. By 1895, city leaders decided to form the Houston Fire Department as a city department, culling the volunteer forces for men, stations, apparatus, and horses. The city grew in leaps and bounds, swallowing up neighborhoods, communities, and smaller cities along the way, with the fire department nipping at their heels. This brave force battled devastating fires throughout the years, most notably the Great Fifth Ward Fire in 1912, the 1943 Gulf Hotel Fire, the Woodway Square Apartment Conflagration in 1979 and the Southwest Inn Fire in 2013. What was once a smattering of volunteer fire brigades has grown into an imposing force of over 3,000 firefighters protecting over two million people in the fourth largest city in the United States.
Settlement of the Lowell area centered on the confluence of the Grand and Flat Rivers. Joseph and Magdaleine LaFramboise first established a fur trading post near the Ottawa village, Segwun, where the rivers meet. The community grew as settlers poured into the area attracted by the growing lumber industry and rich farmland. Diverse businesses emerged including a cutter factory, a vibrant clamming industry, and the states oldest family-run flour mill. A unique feature of the area is Fallasburg Historic Village. Once an active mill town on the Flat River, Fallasburg slid into obscurity when the railroad passed it by. At the height of the Great Depression, businessmen of Lowell joined together to build a showboat to draw visitors to town. The Lowell Showboat is now one of the most recognizable attractions in Lowell. This book explores both well known and more obscure aspects of Lowells history through a wealth of images, many never published before.
With its humble beginnings as a small train junction in Virginias northern piedmont region, Manassas has evolved from a traditional rural community into a leading city of the New South, serving as a focal point for new businesses and growth outside of our nations capital. Though the Civil War left an indelible mark on the character of Manassas, the areas citizens and post-war newcomers were able to begin anew, building a progressive town, full of promise and hope, upon the four-year conflicts ashes and battle-scarred landscape. In Manassas: A Place of Passages, this historic town comes alive, allowing the reader to take an entertaining and educational visual journey from the early days of the Iron Horse at Manassas Junction in the mid-nineteenth century to a more prosperous Manassas in the early twentieth century, when the streets were newly paved and lined with family-owned businesses. This comprehensive volume touches upon every facet of community life: schools, such as the Manassas Institute and the Manassas Industrial School for Colored Youth; the towns many historic churches, which were acknowledged, at one time, by Ripleys Believe It or Not!; several prominent families and civic leaders; and general scenes of people participating in recreational activities, from piano lessons and plays to athletic teams and parades.
South Windsor owes its location to the Connecticut River, whose periodic floods created fertile lowlands that nourished livestock and crops. Tobacco became a mainstay of South Windsor's agricultural life in the early to mid-19th centuries, with mills on the Scantic and Podunk Rivers, tributaries of the Connecticut. Well into the 20th century, South Windor's children still attended some of the one- and two-room schoolhouses around town until the post-World War II baby boom and influx of new residents necessitated new buildings.
The narrow-gauge Denver & Rio Grande (D&RG) Railroad, the first rail system to challenge and successfully conquer Colorado's Rocky Mountains, arrived in the Uncompahgre (un-cum-PAH-gray) Valley on the state's western slope in 1882. Montrose was established to supply mines in the mineral-rich San Juan Mountains and provide a freight transfer depot and a shipping point for gold and silver ore. The US government had forced the Ute Indians off their traditional lands the previous year and opened the area to settlement. Land was quickly claimed and cleared as the booming mining districts created a ready market for all agricultural produce. By the 1893 repeal of the Sherman Silver Act and the US economic decline, Montrose was well established, but continued growth revealed a serious need for supplemental water. Selected as an inaugural project by the newly created US Bureau of Reclamation, the resulting Gunnison Tunnel has provided water since 1909.
Hoke County is located in the Sandhills region of North Carolina between the beaches and mountains. In the beginning, the countryside was covered with magnificent pine forest. Most of the early settlers were Highland Scots who started many of the region's churches. As communities grew, families were concerned about the education of their children. The first high school, Raeford Institute, was established in 1891. The village of Raeford, now the county seat, was chartered in 1901. J. W. McLauchlin, known as the father of Hoke County, was a state senator from Cumberland County. He introduced a bill in 1911 to form Hoke County from parts of Cumberland and Robeson Counties. Today the county has two golf courses, a wind tunnel, an ethanol plant, the Carolina Horse Park, Burlington Industries, and Unilever. The Fort Bragg Military Reservation covers a large part of the county, increasing the military population. Hoke is one of the top five fastest growing counties in North Carolina due to Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC).
Orleans County is a quiet, rural county in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. In the late 18th and early 19th century, southern New England settlers moved north to the hills and valleys where the Native American Abenaki had long resided. Life in Orleans County was hard and isolated, with travel often curtailed by intense winter weather and deep spring mud. But instead of leaving the beautiful land, the people made their own civilization and settled into country life. Images of America: Orleans County highlights the men and women who farmed the land and took part in the growth of industry. Historic photographs portray the county's evolution as the number of farms decreased and factory work increased, transportation progressed from wagon and sleigh to the automobile and railroad, and agriculture moved from horse-powered equipment to gas-powered tractors.
The Hartford area has a rich history of firefighting, beginning with the bucket brigades of early colonial history. As devastating blazes razed many key buildings and entire neighborhoods, these small teams developed into large volunteer groups. The city finally realized that paid fire departments were needed, and the modern firefighting world bloomed with technological advances in equipment and procedures. The evolution of these brave firefighting groups is richly chronicled in Greater Hartford Firefighting.
The area that would become modern Glennville was first opened to settlement in 1773. In the early decades of the 19th century, settlers converged around the intersection of Hencart Road and Reidsville-Johnston's Station Road. The community that grew around this intersection came to be known as Philadelphia--a name it would hold until 1889, when the village's first post office was established. The village was then renamed after a prominent schoolteacher and minister, Glenn Thompson, who was instrumental in securing the post office for the village. Glennville was incorporated as a town in 1894 and continued to grow remarkably through the coming decades until it became the commercial and agricultural hub of Tattnall County.
The name Napa may come from Napato, a clan of the Wintun Indians who once lived along a river that flows into San Francisco Bay. In the 1850s, miners sought refuge in the young city that grew up by the Napa River, living in tents along its main street. Later they and other newcomers found work at businesses and nearby ranches while Napa City flourished as goods and produce from all over the valley were loaded onto steamers bound for San Francisco. Shortening its name in 1900, Napa continued to provide housing and shops, utilities and transportation for a growing agricultural center, and it shared the valleys economic hard times through Prohibition and the Great Depression.
Early Azle settlers began arriving in the mid-1850s and settled near Ash Creek. Azle had several names before settling down to one. An early name was Mooresville after the town's general store owner, Mr. Moore, who supplied the farmers of the community. Following several other name changes, citizens decided upon "Azle" in 1883 after Dr. James Azle Steward, who donated land for the townsite. The town remained small until the building of Eagle Mountain Lake in the 1930s spurred its growth. Further development occurred when World War II brought more people to the area. After nearly a century, the little community officially incorporated in 1957. Images of America: Azle tells the story of numerous pioneer families and their schools, churches, and early businesses. Today, Azle is a close-knit community with various social and civic organizations, as well as parades and jamborees.
A fancy flight of lyrics specifies that Santa Catalina Island is "26 miles across the sea." But mapmakers put the distance at 19.7 miles from the closest island point, Doctor's Cove (near Arrow Point), to the closest mainland locale, Point Fermin at San Pedro. Today boats and helicopters operating out of the Ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Newport Beach, and Dana Point transport musing songwriters and everyone else to Catalina for the song's much-promised "romance, romance, romance, romance," as well as fishing, sightseeing, and gainful employment. But the history of getting to and from the island's ports of Avalon and Two Harbors has been an epic across centuries of business and pleasure, involving a collective flotilla of side-wheelers, yachts, lumber schooners, steamships, water taxis, converted military vessels, crew boats, and today's fast and convenient jet boats.
The charming town of Los Gatos is nestled at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains and is sometimes referred to as the Gem City of the Foothills. It has inspired hundreds of postcard images through the years, many reflecting the areas abundance of natural beauty. As the town and surrounding area grew and prospered through agriculture, logging, and commerce, the local architecture and landmarks became popular subjects. Glimpses of everyday lifechurches, schools, houses, and businessesfurther enhanced the pictorial history the postcards represent.
By 1813, in an area originally inhabited by Native Americans, including a significant Delaware Indian village located on White Rivers western banks, the future Greenwood was made safe for settlement by the Kentucky and Indiana militias. In 1818, with the New Purchase treaties and establishment of Whetzel Trace, the earliest east-west transportation route through central Indiana, the dense, overgrown forest became readied for settlement. Arising from humble beginnings as Smocktown, the community was officially named Greenfield in 1825, followed by renaming to Greenwood in 1833. The territory has seen tremendous growth through the decades since John B. and Isaac Smock arrived, transforming the land from a pioneer village into a contemporary hub of business and industry. Accused of being a bedroom community of Indianapolis, Greenwood strives to maintain its relevance as a unique and historically proud community.
Located in the stark landscape of Eastern Californias Owens Valley, Bishop is situated between two of the highest mountain ranges of the contiguous United States. Native Americans had been in the region since antiquity, and white settlers began to filter in after many battles with the Paiutes and Shoshones. Bishop was named after Sam Bishop, who drove cattle into the area and settled along Bishop Creek. Many more farmers and ranchers followed. To the south, Los Angeles was growing too, tapping the Owens River for a gravity-fed aqueduct for its residents; thus began the Los AngelesOwens Valley Water Conflict.
The Benson Historical Museum's oral histories of the residents of Benson, Arizona and the surrounding areas in Cochise County. Stories of the past experiences of people whose lives have created the fabric of present-day Benson. These stories have been collected over the past thirty years by the museum's historians and transcribed by the museum's volunteers. The museum owes its heartfelt thanks to all the people who have worked tirelessly to make this series possible to pass on these stories of lives past. Their voices continue to tell their stories"--Page vii.
Orcas Island, the largest of the 172 islands in San Juan County, lies in the Salish Sea north of Puget Sound. Known as the Gem of the San Juans for her shimmering emerald hills bounded by 125 miles of rocky, tree-lined shore, Orcas was home to countless generations of Native Americans before the arrival of its first white settlers, formerly Hudsons Bay men who had hunted on the island, in the late 1850s. An international boundary dispute, popularly known as the Pig War, prevented early pioneers from settling land claims until the dispute was resolved by the German kaiser in 1872. Settlement grew slowly until improved steamship routes and increased commerce brought more tourists to the island. In 1906, Robert Moran built a fabulous estate, Rosario, now a world-class resort. Thousands of visitors have been coming to Orcas Island over the years to explore her forested hills, camp in Moran State Park or stay at one of the many historic resorts, and fish in the pristine waters surrounding this island paradise.
From its inception as a supply town during Montana's gold rush in the 1860s, Bozeman has attracted visionaries, leaders, and pioneering thinkers. Bozeman's first mayor, John V. Bogert, established a precedent for keeping the city clean, safe, and orderly. City commissioner and tireless worker Mary Vant Hull spearheaded efforts to build a new library and to expand local parks and trails, and early physician Dr. Henry Foster successfully performed one of the first caesarean sections in Montana. Incredibly talented outdoor advocates and athletes like mountain climber Alex Lowe and long-distance runner Ed Anacker have complemented Bozeman's outdoor lifestyle. An emphasis on art, music, and culture began in the 1860s with piano and voice sensation Emma Weeks Willson. Today, artist Jim Dolan's sculptures are enjoyed all over town, and illusionist Jay Owenhouse wows children and adults with his live shows. Inspiring individuals like Cody Dieruf, who passed away from cystic fibrosis at the age of 23, and dedicated streetcar driver Larry O'Brien have added kindness and courage to local life.
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