National Park Service
The National Park Service is an agency of the United States federal government that manages all national parks, many national monuments, other conservation and historical properties with various title designations. It was created on August 25, 1916, by Congress through the National Park Service Organic Act and is an agency of the United States Department of the Interior; the NPS is charged with a dual role of preserving the ecological and historical integrity of the places entrusted to its management, while making them available and accessible for public use and enjoyment. As of 2018, the NPS employs 27,000 employees who oversee 419 units, of which 61 are designated national parks. National parks and national monuments in the United States were individually managed under the auspices of the Department of the Interior; the movement for an independent agency to oversee these federal lands was spearheaded by business magnate and conservationist Stephen Mather, as well as J. Horace McFarland. With the help of journalist Robert Sterling Yard, Mather ran a publicity campaign for the Department of the Interior.
They wrote numerous articles that praised the scenic and historic qualities of the parks and their possibilities for educational and recreational benefits. This campaign resulted in the creation of a National Park Service. On August 25, 1916, President Woodrow Wilson signed a bill that mandated the agency "to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and wildlife therein, to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations." Mather became the first director of the newly formed NPS. On March 3, 1933, President Herbert Hoover signed the Reorganization Act of 1933; the act would allow the President to reorganize the executive branch of the United States government. It wasn't until that summer when the new President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, made use of this power. Deputy Director Horace M. Albright had suggested to President Roosevelt that the historic sites from the American Civil War should be managed by the National Park Service, rather than the War Department.
President Roosevelt issued two Executive orders to make it happen. These two executive orders not only transferred to the National Park Service all the War Department historic sites, but the national monuments managed by the Department of Agriculture and the parks in and around the capital, run by an independent office. In 1951, Conrad Wirth became director of the National Park Service and went to work on bringing park facilities up to the standards that the public expected; the demand for parks after the end of the World War II had left the parks overburdened with demands that could not be met. In 1952, with the support of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, he began Mission 66, a ten-year effort to upgrade and expand park facilities for the 50th anniversary of the Park Service. New parks were added to preserve unique resources and existing park facilities were upgraded and expanded. In 1966, as the Park Service turned 50 years old, emphasis began to turn from just saving great and wonderful scenery and unique natural features to making parks accessible to the public.
Director George Hartzog began the process with the creation of the National Lakeshores and National Recreation Areas. Since its inception in 1916, the National Park Service has managed each of the United States' national parks, which have grown in number over the years to 60. Yellowstone National Park was the first national park in the United States. In 1872, there was no state government to manage it, so the federal government assumed direct control. Yosemite National Park began as a state park. Yosemite was returned to federal ownership. At first, each national park was managed independently, with varying degrees of success. In Yellowstone, the civilian staff was replaced by the U. S. Army in 1886. Due to the irregularities in managing these national treasures, Stephen Mather petitioned the federal government to improve the situation. In response, Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane challenged him to lobby for creating a new agency, the National Park Service, to manage all national parks and some national monuments.
Mather was successful with the ratification of the National Park Service Organic Act in 1916. The agency was given authority over other protected areas, many with varying designations as Congress created them; the National Park System includes. The title or designation of a unit need not include the term park; the System as a whole is considered to be a national treasure of the United States, some of the more famous national parks and monuments are sometimes referred to metaphorically as "crown jewels". The system encompasses 84.4 million acres, of which more than 4.3 million acres remain in private ownership. The largest unit is Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, Alaska. At 13,200,000 acres, it is over 16 percent of the entire system; the smallest unit in the system is Thaddeus Kosciuszko National Memorial, Pennsylvania, at 0.02 acre. In addition to administering its units and other properties, the National Park Service provides technical and financial assistance to several "affiliated areas" authorized by Congress.
The largest affiliated area is New Jersey Pinelands National Reserve at 1,164,025 acres. The smallest is Benjamin Franklin National Memorial at less than 0.01 acres. Although all units of the Nat
Oneonta, Alabama
Oneonta is a city in Blount County, United States. At the 2010 census the population was 6,567; the city is the county seat of Blount County. Oneonta is home to the Covered Bridge Festival. A post office called Oneonta has been in operation since 1889; the city was named after the native home of a railroad official. In 1889, the county seat was transferred to Oneonta from Blountsville. During World War II, a small POW camp was operated outside of Oneonta. Oneonta is located in eastern Blount County at 33°56'32.291" North, 86°28'43.586" West. It is situated in Murphree Valley between Red Mountain and Sand Mountain to the northwest and Straight Mountain to the southeast. U. S. Route 231 passes through the center of the city, leading northwest 7 miles to Cleveland and southeast 14 miles to Interstate 59 in Ashville. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 15.3 square miles, of which 15.2 square miles is land and 0.077 square miles, or 0.54%, is water. As of the census of 2010, there were 6,567 people, 2,502 households, 1,630 families residing in the city.
The population density was 433 inhabitants per square mile. There were 2,751 housing units at an average density of 179.8 per square mile. The racial makeup of the city was 84.1% White, 6.0% Black or African American, 0.5% Native American, 0.5% Asian, 7.6% from other races, 1.3% from two or more races. 15.9% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. There were 2,502 households out of which 28.4% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.9% were married couples living together, 11.0% had a female householder with no husband present, 34.9% were non-families. 31.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 15.3% had someone living alone, 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.46 and the average family size was 3.11. In the city, the age distribution of the population shows 23.0% under the age of 18, 7.8% from 18 to 24, 24.7% from 25 to 44, 23.8% from 45 to 64, 20.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 40.5 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.0 males.
For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101.3 males. The median income for a household in the city was $40,192, the median income for a family was $50,236. Males had a median income of $41,425 versus $22,160 for females; the per capita income for the city was $18,951. About 13.0% of families and 17.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 27.2% of those under age 18 and 16.4% of those age 65 or over. The city government is made up of Mayor Ross Norris, a five-person city council —Hal Blackwood, Nate Butler, Danny Robinson, Richard Phillips, Tonya H. Rogers. City Manager: Ed Lowe City Clerk: Tammie Noland Mayor: Ross Norris Oneonta, Alabama is home to the Historical Covered Bridge Festival; this annual event showcases the history of the remaining covered bridges in Blount County, includes an arts and crafts festival with entertainment and events. Located in Oneonta is the Blount County Memorial Museum, which hosts a variety of resources for genealogy research. Palisades Park features public campgrounds.
Public education is provided by Oneonta City Schools. There are three schools in the city: Oneonta Elementary School, Oneonta Middle School, Oneonta High School. WCRL 1570 AM – Oldies Osmond Ingram, sailor in the United States Navy during World War I who posthumously received the Medal of Honor Steve Patton, head coach of the Gardner–Webb University football team from 1997–2010 Kevin Sherrer, football coach City of Oneonta official website Blount County-Oneonta Chamber of Commerce Oneonta City Schools Oneonta Business Association
Robert G. Griffith Sr. House
The Robert G. Griffith Sr. House is a historic house near Blount County, Alabama; the two-story I-house was built in 1851 for Robert Griffin Griffith. As the only surviving early I-house in Blount County, the dwelling is representative of the residence of a financially comfortable agricultural family in the Appalachian region of Alabama, it was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage on June 30, 1995 and to the National Register of Historic Places on March 14, 2000
Lattice truss bridge
A lattice bridge is a form of truss bridge that uses a large number of small and spaced diagonal elements that form a lattice. Bridges of this type were patented in the 19th century by architect Ithiel Town, are sometimes called Town lattice trusses. A design to allow a substantial bridge to be made from planks employing lower–skilled labor, rather than heavy timbers and more expensive carpenters, this type of bridge has been constructed using a large number of light iron or steel members; the individual elements are more handled by the construction workers, but the bridge requires substantial support during construction. A simple lattice truss will transform the applied loads into a thrust, as the bridge will tend to change length under load; this is resisted by pinning the lattice members to the top and bottom chords, which are more substantial than the lattice members, but which may be fabricated from small elements rather than large beams. The Belfast truss is a cross between the bowstring truss.
It was developed in Ireland. McTear & Co of Belfast, Ireland began fabricating these trusses in wood starting around 1866. By 1899, spans of 24 meters had been achieved, in the 20th century and airplane hangars demanded greater clear spans. Bartonsville Covered Bridge Brown Covered Bridge Burt Henry Covered Bridge Cornish-Windsor Covered Bridge Euharlee Covered Bridge Kingsley Covered Bridge Poole's Mill Covered Bridge Root Road Covered Bridge Waterford Covered Bridge Watson Mill Covered Bridge Windsor Mills Covered Bridge Worrall Covered Bridge Frankenfield Covered Bridge Zehnder's Holz Brucke Howard Carroll built the first wrought-iron lattice truss bridge; this was built for the New York Central Railroad in 1859. Bennerley Viaduct Bridge in Brown Township Dowery Dell Viaduct known as Hunnington or Frankley Viaduct Kew Railway Bridge Norwottuck Rail Trail Bridge Willow Creek Bridge, in Pierce County, Nebraska Upper Slate Run Bridge, a'quintangular' lattice truss in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania Lattice girder Brown truss Picture and description of Town's lattice truss Watson Mill Bridge, Georgia, US
National Register of Historic Places listings in Alabama
This is a list of buildings, sites and objects listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama. This National Park Service list is complete through NPS recent listings posted April 12, 2019. There are 1,200 properties and districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama; the numbers of properties and districts in Alabama or in any of its 67 counties are not directly reported by the National Register. Following are tallies of current listings from lists of the specific properties and districts. There are no sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places in Geneva County. List of National Historic Landmarks in Alabama List of bridges on the National Register of Historic Places in Alabama
Heritage Documentation Programs
Heritage Documentation Programs is a division of the U. S. National Park Service responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey, Historic American Engineering Record, Historic American Landscapes Survey; these programs were established to document historic places in the United States. Records consist of measured drawings, archival photographs, written reports, are archived in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. In 1933, NPS established the Historic American Buildings Survey following a proposal by Charles E. Peterson, a young landscape architect in the agency, it was founded as a constructive make-work program for architects and photographers left jobless by the Great Depression. Guided by field instructions from Washington, D. C. the first HABS recorders were tasked with documenting a representative sampling of America's architectural heritage. By creating an archive of historic architecture, HABS provided a database of primary source material and documentation for the then-fledgling historic preservation movement.
Earlier private projects included the White Pine Series of Architectural Monographs, many contributors to which joined the HABS program. Notable HABS photographers include Jack Boucher; the Historic American Engineering Record program was founded on January 10, 1969, by NPS and the American Society of Civil Engineers. HAER documents historic mechanical and engineering artifacts. Since the advent of HAER, the combined program is called "HABS/HAER". Today much of the work of HABS/HAER is done by student teams during the summer, or as part of college-credit classwork. Eric DeLony headed HAER from 1971 to 2003. In October 2000, NPS and the American Society of Landscape Architects established a sister program, the Historic American Landscapes Survey, to systematically document historic American landscapes. A predecessor, the Historic American Landscape and Garden Project, recorded historic Massachusetts gardens between 1935 and 1940; that project was funded by the Works Progress Administration, but was administered by HABS, which supervised the collection of records.
The permanent collection of HABS/HAER/HALS are housed at the Library of Congress, established in 1790 as the replacement reference library of the United States Congress. It has since been expanded to serve as the National Library of the United States. S. publishers are required to deposit a copy of every copyrighted and published work, book monograph and magazine. As a branch of the United States Government, its created works are in the public domain in the US. Many images and documents are available through the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, including proposed and existing structures. Jack Boucher, former HABS/HAER photographer Jet Lowe, former HAER photographer National Register of Historic Places Notes Further reading "HAER: 30 Years of Recording Our Technological Heritage". IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology. 25. 1999. JSTOR i40043493. "Documenting Complexity: The Historic American Engineering Record and America's Technological History". IA, The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archeology.
23. 1997. JSTOR i4004348. Lindley, John; the Georgia Collection: Historic American Buildings Survey. University of Georgia Press. ISBN 0-8203-0613-4. Witcher, T. R.. "Fifty Years of Preservation: The Historic American Engineering Record". Civil Engineering. National Park Service−NPS: official Heritage Documentation Programs website
Covered bridge
A covered bridge is a timber-truss bridge with a roof and siding, which in most covered bridges, create an complete enclosure. The purpose of the covering is to protect the wooden structural members from the weather. Uncovered wooden bridges have a lifespan of only 20 years because of the effects of rain and sun, but a covered bridge could last 100 years; the oldest surviving truss bridge in the world is the Kapellbrücke in Switzerland. Modern-style timber truss bridges were pioneered in Switzerland in the mid-1700s; the first known covered bridge constructed in the United States was the Permanent Bridge, completed in 1805 to span the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. The structure endured beyond the estimate of 40 years offered by its architect, only being taken down in 1850 to make way for a new bridge more conducive to carrying railroad tracks. About 1,500 covered bridges were built from 1820 and 1900, most were built from 1825 and 1875; the longest built was over the Susquehanna River at 5,960 feet.
Built in 1814, it was washed away in the freshets of 1832. In total, more than 12,000 covered bridges have been built in the United States, about 3,500 of which in Ohio. In the mid-1800s, the development of cheaper wrought iron and cast iron led to metal rather than timber trusses. Metal structures did not need protection from the elements, so no longer needed to be covered; the bridges became obsolete because most were single-lane, had low width and height clearances, could not support the heavy loads of modern traffic. In 1900, Quebec had an estimated 1000 covered bridges. Relative to the rest of North America, Quebec was late in building covered bridges, with the busiest decade for construction being the 1930s; the designs were varied, but around 1905, the design was standardised to the Town québécois, a variant on the lattice truss patented by Ithiel Town in 1820. About 500 of these were built in the first half of the 1900s; the last bridge was built by the Ministry of Colonisation in 1958 in Lebel-sur-Quévillon.
In 1900, New Brunswick had about 400 covered bridges. Today, there are 58. Between 1969 and 2015, the number of surviving covered bridges in Canada declined from about 400 to under 200. Covered bridges are structures with longitudinal timber-trusses which form the bridge's backbone; some were built as railway bridges, using heavy timbers and doubled up lattice work. Most bridges were built to cross streams, the majority had just a single span. All contained a single lane. A few two-lane bridges were built, having a central truss. Many different truss designs were used. One of the most popular designs was the Burr Truss, patented in 1817, which used an arch to bear the load, while the trusses kept the bridge rigid. Other designs included the King, Queen and Howe trusses. Early trusses were designed without an understanding of the engineering dynamics at work. In 1847, American engineer Squire Whipple published the first correct analysis of the way a load is carried through the truss, which enabled him to design stronger bridges with fewer materials.
About 1600 covered bridges remain in the world. The small number of surviving bridges is due to deliberate replacement and the high cost of restoration, they tend to be in isolated places which makes them subject to arson. The oldest covered bridges in America date back to the 1820s: 1825: Hyde Hall and Hassenplug bridges in New York and Pennsylvania 1829: Haverhill-Bath in New Hampshire and Roberts bridges in OhioAs of 2018, fewer than 1,000 authentic covered bridges are left in the United States. New Brunswick, has 58 covered bridges, including the world's longest, the Hartland Bridge. With 82 covered bridges in Quebec, Transports Québec considers the Félix-Gabriel-Marchand Bridge, the province's longest covered bridge, to be an important tourist attraction. In addition to being practical, covered bridges were popular venues for a variety of social activities and are enduring cultural icon; the Edgar Allan Poe story "Never Bet the Devil Your Head" Plot points in the 1988 comedy films Beetlejuice and Funny Farm refer to them.
Diehls Covered Bridge in Pennsylvania is featured in the opening scenes of The 1980's Anthology Horror Television Series Tales from the Darkside that ran, created by George Romero. Covered Bridge Map, an interactive map showing locations of covered bridges in the United States and Canada
