The story of Tennessee's state parks began more than 80 years ago when New Deal agencies worked to rebuild portions of Tennessee's eroded landscape. Along with these conservation measures, the state's early parks were created through the development of recreational areas. The Tennessee Valley Authority built dams that contributed to recreational attractions, and the Division of State Parks was started in 1937. All of these efforts in addition to Tennessee's...

In 1750, the deep-water port of Yorktown housed approximately 250–300 businesses, with as many as 2,000 people thriving in the small town. By 1781, the Revolutionary War's final siege had been staged, and the British were caught without resources to win the final battle against the American and Allied forces. Freedom was won for America, but Yorktown would continue to see war. In 1862, the Peninsula Campaign of the Civil War led to a month-long...

Envisioning a noble beachfront park so ordinary people could enjoy a slice of the good life, master builder Robert Moses set out to transform a little-known barrier island off Long Island's South Shore into the civic masterpiece now known as Jones Beach State Park. All vacationers and day-trippers had to do was simply follow its beloved mascot, the Jones Beach seahorse, for an unforgettable day of sand and surf, or for a swim in the saltwater pool...

From Wilmington, Fayetteville, Greenville, New Bern, Elizabeth City, Wilson, Kinston, Goldsboro, and many points in between, this book offers a brief look at many of the historical asylums and sanatoriums, as well as temporary hospitals of war and disaster, in Eastern North Carolina. It shows what they were and what they became as they transformed into the great hospitals of today. Many of these old buildings have long since been torn down or reused...

The history of Florida railroads began as early as 1834, when the Tallahassee-St. Marks Railroad incorporated. On April 14, 1836, the St. Joseph-Lake Wimico line was the first to be put into service, with trains operating between the boomtown of St. Joseph and the Apalachicola River. Although the Florida railroad "boom" began with Henry Flagler and Henry Bradley Plant, the expansion continued into the 1920s when the president of Seaboard Railway,...

Honolulu's population grew in the first few decades of the 1800s from a few hundred people living in thatched huts to about 3,000 in 1823. Missionaries erected the city's earliest wooden buildings in the 1820s. Starting in the 1840s, stones were used in construction. With so many foreigners moving to Honolulu during the late 1800s, rapid growth occurred, and the remaining thatched huts and old paths were replaced with permanent structures and patterned...

The Great Depression came early to St. Augustine with the end of the Florida land boom in 1926, followed by the stock market collapse in 1929. Hotels closed, a major bank failed, subdivisions folded, and tourism was reduced to a trickle. The city's main employer, the Florida East Coast Railway, went into receivership in 1931, and public works projects sought to bring relief to the unemployed. The economy slowly improved toward the end of the 1930s,...

The town of Kennebunk split from the neighboring town of Wells on June 24, 1820, just three months after Maine became a state. Kennebunk's proximity to three large bodies of water, the Kennebunk River, the Mousam River, and the Atlantic Ocean, fueled its development over thousands of years. Kennebunk's waterways were home to Wabanaki hunters, settlement farmers, early lumber mills, and a booming shipbuilding business. The Maine coast soon brought...

Most visitors travel to Sedona to view the towering red rock sandstone formations dotted with juniper pines and to hike and explore Oak Creek Canyon, along with other beautiful canyons that were once showcased by the Westerns filmed in Sedona. After the ancient peoples who farmed departed the area, the Homestead Act of the 1870s advertised free land and lured cattle ranchers and farmers, but by the 1960s, tourism reigned, and Sedona became a destination...

Lighthouses of the North Atlantic Coast will explore many of the lighthouses and breakwater, pier, and reef lights in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware. Whether it is Portland Head Lighthouse in Maine or Fenwick Island Lighthouse in Delaware, then as now, people love to visit the lights while on holiday and send postcards back home. Many of these important navigational aids are still...