Arcadia Publishing Inc : 7152 books

Today's Shawnee National Forest visitors would not recognize 1930s southern Illinois. Hills and hollows were void of trees, the rivers and creeks choked with eroded topsoil. The need for a national forest was so great that a small group of men from southeastern Illinois vowed to make it happen. Much...

In 1877, the U.S. Navy purchased the fast steam yacht Stiletto from the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company of Bristol, Rhode Island, for "automobile" torpedo experiments in Narragansett Bay. The submarine service was in its infancy, and interest in the self-propelled torpedo as an undersea weapon flourished....

The year 1957 brought change to Mooresville and southern Iredell County, and that change arrived in trucks. Big white ones flashed the logo of Burlington Industries, the new owners of the Mooresville Cotton Mills. Bright yellow ones from the Duke Power Company brought earth-moving machines to clear the...

Brockton, first settled in 1700, was originally a part of Old Bridgewater, known as North Parish and later as North Bridgewater. On April 9, 1881, it officially became the City of Brockton. During the Civil War, Brockton was the largest producer of shoes in the country, earning it the nickname �Shoe...

Established in March 1856, Roane County was named forVirginia jurist Spencer Roane. The town of New California was selected as the county seat, and in 1858, the name was changed to Spencer to further honor the judge. The courthouse built in 1859 was destroyed by fire in 1887. A new county courthouse...

Native Americans, particularly the Cherokee, inhabited Western North Carolina for thousands of years prior to white settlement. Legend has it that the name Dry Ridge derived from what the natives called the area. When Michael Montraville Weaver provided the land in the 1870s, Weaversville was born. The...

Bossier City sprung up around cotton fields, railroads, steamboats, and factories as the little town across from Shreveport. Today, the city thrives as the fastest growing in Louisiana. The tight-knit community of citizens who have called Bossier City home for several generations has grown to include...

Greenup County, bordering the Ohio River in northeast Kentucky, is rich in history and culture. Settlers first arrived in the mid-1700s and carved farms from the hardwood forests. Lucy Virgin Downs, the first white child born west of the Alleghenies, lived in Greenup County, as did Jesse Boone, brother...

Originating almost a quarter of a century prior to the Civil War, Mercer County, West Virginia was namedfor General Hugh Mercer, a Revolutionary War hero. The county has been a crossroads for many events, including the Civil War and the establishment of an industrial economy after the war ended. When...

It was a hot afternoon in August 1856 when people in southern Iredell County, North Carolina, gathered for a special event. The train was on its way, bringing officials, a brass band, and the economic future. John Franklin Moore viewed the railroad tracks as an opportunity to fulfill his dream of starting...

This is the place. As Heriot Clarkson sat on his mule atop Grassy Mountain in June 1909, he looked out over a sea of mountains extending to the horizon in every direction, his dreams before him. Here was the spot for a retreat from the summer heat of the piedmont and coastal plain where simple living...

Morrisville is known as a small, sleepy town in central North Carolina. However, this town in the heart of the state�s most technological area has a long and colorful past. The Morrisville community traces its origin to its location on the state�s colonial east-west road and became a town, naming...

Beginning as a humble vaudeville hall in the Skowhegan-Madison trolley park, Lakewood Theatre has graced the southwestern shore of Lake Wesserunsett in Madison, Maine, since the turn of the 20th century. Under the masterful guidance of Herbert L. Swett, a Bangor native and Bowdoin graduate, Lakewood...

During the summer of 1834, a group of eastern land investors set its sights on newly platted land at the �great bend� in the Kalamazoo River, now known as Allegan. This former site of a Pottawatomi village was blessed with both beauty and bounty. Surrounded by woods and with a river racing throughit,...