1.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
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The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is a museum and art school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1805 and is the first and oldest art museum, the academys museum is internationally known for its collections of 19th- and 20th-century American paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. Its archives house important materials for the study of American art history, museums, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was founded in 1805 by painter and scientist Charles Willson Peale, sculptor William Rush, and other artists and business leaders. The growth of the Academy of Fine Arts was slow and it opened as a museum in 1807 and held its first exhibition in 1811, where more than 500 paintings and statues were on display. The first school classes held in the building were with the Society of Artists in 1810, in 1876, former Academy student Thomas Eakins returned to teach as a volunteer. Fairman Rogers, chairman of the Committee on Instruction from 1878 to 1883, made him a faculty member in 1878, Eakins revamped the certificate curriculum to what it remains today. From 1811 to 1969, the Academy also organized important annual art exhibitions from which significant acquisitions were made, harrison S. Morris, Managing Director from 1892 to 1905, collected contemporary American art for the institution. Among the many masterpieces acquired during his tenure were works by Cecilia Beaux, William Merritt Chase, Frank Duveneck, Thomas Eakins, Winslow Homer, Childe Hassam, and Edmund Tarbell. Work by The Eight, which included former Academy students Robert Henri and John Sloan, is represented in the collection. From 1890 to 1906, Edward Hornor Coates served as the president of the Academy. In 1915, Coates was awarded the Academys gold medal, rich endowments were made to the schools, a gallery of national portraiture was formed, and some of the best examples of Gilbert Stuarts work acquired. The annual exhibitions attained a brilliancy and éclat hitherto unknown, mr. Coates wisely established the schools upon a conservative basis, building almost unconsciously the dykes high against the oncoming flow of insane novelties in art patterns. In this last struggle against modernism the President was ably supported by Eakins, Anschutz, Grafly, Thouron, Vonnoh and his unfailing courtesy, his disinterested thoughtfulness, his tactfulness, and his modesty endeared him to scholars and masters alike. No sacrifice of time or of means was too great, if he thought he could accomplish the end he always had in view—the honour, during World War I, Academy students were actively involved in war work. About sixty percent of the men enlisted or entered Government service. A war service club was formed by students and a monthly publication, George Harding, a former PAFA student, was commissioned Captain during the war and created official combat sketches for the American Expeditionary Forces. Prior to the founding of the Academy, there were limited opportunities for women to receive training in the United States. Realizing the rise in interest of women, this period between the mid-19th and early 20th century shows a remarkable growth of formally trained women artists
4.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
5.
Landscape painting
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In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition, detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects. The two main traditions spring from Western painting and Chinese art, going well over a thousand years in both cases. Landscape views in art may be imaginary, or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy. If the primary purpose of a picture is to depict an actual, specific place, especially including buildings prominently, within a few decades it was used to describe vistas in poetry, and eventually as a term for real views. However the cognate term landscaef or landskipe for a patch of land had existed in Old English. The earliest pure landscapes with no figures are frescos from Minoan Greece of around 1500 BCE. The frescos from the Tomb of Nebamun, now in the British Museum, are a famous example. These were frequently used, as in the illustrated, to bridge the gap between a foreground scene with figures and a distant panoramic vista, a persistent problem for landscape artists. The Chinese style generally showed only a distant view, or used dead ground or mist to avoid that difficulty, aesthetic theories in both regions gave the highest status to the works seen to require the most imagination from the artist. They were often also poets whose lines and images illustrated each other, a revival in interest in nature initially mainly manifested itself in depictions of small gardens such as the Hortus Conclusus or those in millefleur tapestries. The frescos of figures at work or play in front of a background of trees in the Palace of the Popes. Several frescos of gardens have survived from Roman houses like the Villa of Livia, a particular advance is shown in the less well-known Turin-Milan Hours, now largely destroyed by fire, whose developments were reflected in Early Netherlandish painting for the rest of the century. Landscape backgrounds for various types of painting became prominent and skilful during the 15th century. The Italian development of a system of graphical perspective was now known all over Europe. Indeed, certain styles were so popular that they became formulas that could be copied again and again, after the publication of the Small Landscapes, landscape artists in the Low Countries either continued with the world landscape or followed the new mode presented by the Small Landscapes. The popularity of landscape scenes can be seen in the success of the painter Frans Post. Salvator Rosa gave picturesque excitement to his landscapes by showing wilder Southern Italian country, there are different styles and periods, and subgenres of marine and animal painting, as well as a distinct style of Italianate landscape
6.
Romanticism
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Romanticism was characterized by its emphasis on emotion and individualism as well as glorification of all the past and nature, preferring the medieval rather than the classical. It was embodied most strongly in the arts, music, and literature, but had a major impact on historiography, education. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, Romanticism assigned a high value to the achievements of heroic individualists and artists, whose examples, it maintained, would raise the quality of society. It also promoted the individual imagination as a critical authority allowed of freedom from classical notions of form in art, there was a strong recourse to historical and natural inevitability, a Zeitgeist, in the representation of its ideas. In the second half of the 19th century, Realism was offered as a polar opposite to Romanticism, the decline of Romanticism during this time was associated with multiple processes, including social and political changes and the spread of nationalism. Defining the nature of Romanticism may be approached from the point of the primary importance of the free expression of the feelings of the artist. The importance the Romantics placed on emotion is summed up in the remark of the German painter Caspar David Friedrich that the feeling is his law. Samuel Taylor Coleridge and others believed there were laws that the imagination—at least of a good creative artist—would unconsciously follow through artistic inspiration if left alone. As well as rules, the influence of models from other works was considered to impede the creators own imagination, so that originality was essential. The concept of the genius, or artist who was able to produce his own work through this process of creation from nothingness, is key to Romanticism. This idea is called romantic originality. Not essential to Romanticism, but so widespread as to be normative, was a strong belief, however, this is particularly in the effect of nature upon the artist when he is surrounded by it, preferably alone. Romantic art addressed its audiences with what was intended to be felt as the voice of the artist. So, in literature, much of romantic poetry invited the reader to identify the protagonists with the poets themselves. In both French and German the closeness of the adjective to roman, meaning the new literary form of the novel, had some effect on the sense of the word in those languages. It is only from the 1820s that Romanticism certainly knew itself by its name, the period typically called Romantic varies greatly between different countries and different artistic media or areas of thought. Margaret Drabble described it in literature as taking place roughly between 1770 and 1848, and few dates much earlier than 1770 will be found. In English literature, M. H. Abrams placed it between 1789, or 1798, this latter a very typical view, and about 1830, however, in most fields the Romantic Period is said to be over by about 1850, or earlier
7.
Fine art
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Historically, the five main fine arts were painting, sculpture, architecture, music and poetry, with performing arts including theatre and dance. Today, the fine arts commonly include additional forms, such as film, photography, video production/editing, design, sequential art, conceptual art, and printmaking. However, in some institutes of learning or in museums, fine art, in that sense, there are conceptual differences between the fine arts and the applied arts. The word fine does not so much denote the quality of the artwork in question and this definition originally excluded the applied or decorative arts, and the products of what were regarded as crafts. According to some writers the concept of a category of fine art is an invention of the early modern period in the West. Larry Shiner in his The Invention of Art, A Cultural History locates the invention in the 18th century, There was a traditional “system of the arts” in the West before the eighteenth century. ”Similar ideas have been expressed by Paul Oskar Kristeller, Pierre Bourdieu, and Terry Eagleton, though the point of invention is often placed earlier, in the Italian Renaissance. The separation of arts and crafts that often exists in Europe, in Japanese aesthetics the activities of everyday life are depicted by integrating not only art with craft but man-made with nature. Traditional Chinese art distinguished within Chinese painting between the mostly landscape painting of scholar gentlemen and the artisans of the schools of court painting. A high status was given to many things that would be seen as craft objects in the West, in particular ceramics, jade carving, weaving. Drawing is a form of expression and is one of the major forms of the visual arts. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, There are a number of subcategories of drawing, including cartooning. Mosaics are images formed with pieces of stone or glass. They can be decorative or functional, an artist who designs and makes mosaics is called a mosaic artist or a mosaicist. Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper, except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable of producing multiples of the same piece, which is called a print. Each print is considered an original, as opposed to a copy, the reasoning behind this is that the print is not a reproduction of another work of art in a different medium — for instance, a painting — but rather an image designed from inception as a print. An individual print is also referred to as an impression, prints are created from a single original surface, known technically as a matrix. But there are other kinds, discussed below. Multiple nearly identical prints can be called an edition, in modern times each print is often signed and numbered forming a limited edition
8.
California
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California is the most populous state in the United States and the third most extensive by area. Located on the western coast of the U. S, California is bordered by the other U. S. states of Oregon, Nevada, and Arizona and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California. Los Angeles is Californias most populous city, and the second largest after New York City. The Los Angeles Area and the San Francisco Bay Area are the nations second- and fifth-most populous urban regions, California also has the nations most populous county, Los Angeles County, and its largest county by area, San Bernardino County. The Central Valley, an agricultural area, dominates the states center. What is now California was first settled by various Native American tribes before being explored by a number of European expeditions during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish Empire then claimed it as part of Alta California in their New Spain colony. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821 following its war for independence. The western portion of Alta California then was organized as the State of California, the California Gold Rush starting in 1848 led to dramatic social and demographic changes, with large-scale emigration from the east and abroad with an accompanying economic boom. If it were a country, California would be the 6th largest economy in the world, fifty-eight percent of the states economy is centered on finance, government, real estate services, technology, and professional, scientific and technical business services. Although it accounts for only 1.5 percent of the states economy, the story of Calafia is recorded in a 1510 work The Adventures of Esplandián, written as a sequel to Amadis de Gaula by Spanish adventure writer Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The kingdom of Queen Calafia, according to Montalvo, was said to be a land inhabited by griffins and other strange beasts. This conventional wisdom that California was an island, with maps drawn to reflect this belief, shortened forms of the states name include CA, Cal. Calif. and US-CA. Settled by successive waves of arrivals during the last 10,000 years, various estimates of the native population range from 100,000 to 300,000. The Indigenous peoples of California included more than 70 distinct groups of Native Americans, ranging from large, settled populations living on the coast to groups in the interior. California groups also were diverse in their organization with bands, tribes, villages. Trade, intermarriage and military alliances fostered many social and economic relationships among the diverse groups, the first European effort to explore the coast as far north as the Russian River was a Spanish sailing expedition, led by Portuguese captain Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, in 1542. Some 37 years later English explorer Francis Drake also explored and claimed a portion of the California coast in 1579. Spanish traders made unintended visits with the Manila galleons on their trips from the Philippines beginning in 1565
9.
Yosemite Valley
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Yosemite Valley is a glacial valley in Yosemite National Park in the western Sierra Nevada mountains of Northern California. The valley is about 8 miles long and up to a deep, surrounded by high granite summits such as Half Dome and El Capitan. The valley is drained by the Merced River and a multitude of streams and waterfalls including Tenaya, Illilouette, Yosemite, Yosemite Falls is the highest waterfall in North America, and is a big attraction especially in the spring when the water flow is at its peak. The valley is renowned for its beauty, and is widely regarded as the centerpiece of Yosemite National Park. The Valley is the attraction in the park for the majority of visitors. On July 2,2011 there was a record 20,851 visitors to the valley, most visitors enter the valley from roads to the west and pass through the famous Tunnel View entrance. Visitor facilities are located in the center of the valley, there are both hiking trail loops that stay within the valley and trailheads that lead to higher elevations, all of which afford glimpses of the parks many scenic wonders. Yosemite Valley is located on the slope of the Sierra Nevada mountains,150 miles due east of San Francisco. It stretches for 7.5 miles in a roughly east-west direction, Yosemite Valley represents only one percent of the park area, but this is where most visitors arrive and stay. More than half a dozen creeks tumble from hanging valleys at the top of cliffs that can rise 3000–4000 feet above the valley floor. These streams combine into the Merced River, which flows out from the end of the valley. The flat floor of Yosemite Valley holds both forest and large meadows, which provide breathtaking views of the surrounding crests and waterfalls. The first view of Yosemite Valley many visitors see is the Tunnel View, so many paintings were made from a viewpoint nearby that the National Park Service named that viewpoint Artist Point. The view from the end of the Valley contains the great granite monolith El Capitan on the left. Just past this spot the Valley suddenly widens with the Cathedral Spires, to this point, the Valley has been curving gently to the left, to the north. Now a grand curve back to the right begins, with Yosemite Falls on the north, followed by the Royal Arches, opposite to the south is Glacier Point,3,200 feet above the Valley floor. At this point the Valley splits into two, one section slanting northeast, with the other curving from south to southeast, between them both, at the eastern end of the valley, is Half Dome, the most famous and most recognizable natural feature in the Sierra Nevada. Above and to the northeast of Half Dome is Clouds Rest, at 9926 feet, snow melting in the Sierra forms creeks and lakes
10.
White Mountains (New Hampshire)
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The White Mountains are a mountain range covering about a quarter of the state of New Hampshire and a small portion of western Maine in the United States. They are part of the northern Appalachian Mountains and the most rugged mountains in New England, the range is heavily visited due to its proximity to Boston and, to a lesser extent, New York City and Montreal. Most of the area is land, including the White Mountain National Forest. Its most famous mountain is 6, 288-foot Mount Washington, which is the highest peak in the Northeastern U. S. Mount Washington is part of a line of summits, the Presidential Range, that are named after U. S. presidents and other prominent Americans. The White Mountains also include the Franconia Range, Sandwich Range, Carter-Moriah Range and Kinsman Range in New Hampshire, in all, there are 48 peaks within New Hampshire as well as one in Maine over 4,000 feet, known as the Four-thousand footers. The Whites are known for a system of alpine huts for hikers operated by the Appalachian Mountain Club, the Appalachian Trail crosses the area from southwest to northeast. It is not clear where the name White Mountains came from, there is no record of what Native Americans called the range, although pre-Colonial names for many individual peaks are known. The name and similar such as White Hills or Wine Hills are found in literature from Colonial times. According to tradition, the mountains were first sighted from shipboard off the coast near the Piscataqua estuary, the highest peaks would often be snow-capped, appearing white. An alternate theory is that the granite of the summits looked white to observers. The White Mountains are a section of the larger New England province. The magma intrusions forming the White Mountains today were created 124 to 100 million years ago as the North American Plate moved westward over the New England hotspot, widespread evidence of glaciation may be seen in the U-shaped form of various notches, or mountain passes. Glacial cirques form the heads of Tuckerman Ravine on Mt. Washington, glacial striations are visible at numerous locations, including on the exposed rocks at the summit of Pine Mountain in Gorham. The Mount Washington Auto Road and the historic Mount Washington Cog Railway ascend the ranges highest peak, heavily visited Arethusa Falls, the second tallest waterfall in New Hampshire, lies on a southwest flank of Crawford Notch. The Old Man of the Mountain, a formation on Cannon Mountain that resembled the craggy profile of a mans face, was a White Mountain landmark until it fell in May 2003. It remains the symbol of New Hampshire. The range also includes a feature dubbed The Basin, consisting of a granite bowl,20 feet in diameter, fed by a waterfall. The areas around The Basin are popular spots for swimming in the ice-cold mountain-fed water, some of the earliest maps of the White Mountains were produced as tourist maps and not topographical maps
11.
Birmingham
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Birmingham is a major city and metropolitan borough of West Midlands, England lying on the River Rea, a small river that runs through Birmingham. It is the largest and most populous British city outside London, the city is in the West Midlands Built-up Area, the third most populous urban area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2,440,986 at the 2011 census. Birminghams metropolitan area is the second most populous in the UK with a population of 3.8 million and this also makes Birmingham the 8th most populous metropolitan area in Europe. By 1791 it was being hailed as the first manufacturing town in the world, perhaps the most important invention in British history, the industrial steam engine, was invented in Birmingham. From the summer of 1940 to the spring of 1943, Birmingham was bombed heavily by the German Luftwaffe in what is known as the Birmingham Blitz. The damage done to the infrastructure, in addition to a deliberate policy of demolition and new building by planners, led to extensive demolition. Today Birminghams economy is dominated by the service sector and its metropolitan economy is the second largest in the United Kingdom with a GDP of $121. 1bn, and its six universities make it the largest centre of higher education in the country outside London. Birmingham is the fourth-most visited city in the UK by foreign visitors, Birminghams sporting heritage can be felt worldwide, with the concept of the Football League and lawn tennis both originating from the city. Its most successful football club Aston Villa has won seven league titles, people from Birmingham are called Brummies, a term derived from the citys nickname of Brum. This originates from the citys name, Brummagem, which may in turn have been derived from one of the citys earlier names. There is a distinctive Brummie accent and dialect, Birminghams early history is that of a remote and marginal area. The main centres of population, power and wealth in the pre-industrial English Midlands lay in the fertile and accessible river valleys of the Trent, the Severn and the Avon. The area of modern Birmingham lay in between, on the upland Birmingham Plateau and within the wooded and sparsely populated Forest of Arden. Birmingham as a settlement dates from the Anglo-Saxon era, within a century of the charter Birmingham had grown into a prosperous urban centre of merchants and craftsmen. By 1327 it was the third-largest town in Warwickshire, a position it would retain for the next 200 years, by 1700 Birminghams population had increased fifteenfold and the town was the fifth-largest in England and Wales. The importance of the manufacture of goods to Birminghams economy was recognised as early as 1538. Equally significant was the emerging role as a centre for the iron merchants who organised finance, supplied raw materials. The 18th century saw this tradition of free-thinking and collaboration blossom into the phenomenon now known as the Midlands Enlightenment
12.
Edward Hill (painter)
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Edward Hill was a prolific artist as well as a published poet, songwriter, and newspaper correspondent. His paintings include White Mountain landscapes, southern genre scenes, still lifes, portraits, American Indians, European attractions, Hill was born in the Union Poor House, Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England on December 9,1843. His family moved to the United States in 1844, settling in Taunton, moving frequently, the family finally settled in Gardner, Massachusetts in 1860. Edward and his brother, Thomas Hill, worked for Heywood Brothers & Company decorating furniture, Edward moved to San Francisco in 1862 where he shared a studio with Thomas who had settled there the previous year. By 1864, Edward returned to Boston and began painting in earnest, Hill married Sarah Lorla Brown in 1869 and moved to Littleton, New Hampshire the following year. In 1874, the moved to Lancaster, New Hampshire. In 1875, while living in Lancaster, Hill painted The Presidential Range from Legros Hill, Lancaster, from 1877 to 1892, Hill was artist-in-residence at the Profile House in Franconia Notch. The surrounding area provided subjects for his paintings that proved popular with the hotel guests - Profile Lake, the Old Man of the Mountain, Echo Lake, Eagle Cliff, The Flume, and Mount Lafayette. Hill exhibited regularly at the Boston Art Club throughout the 1880s, by this time, Hills financial success and artistic acceptance were firmly established. Hill spent the last years of his life in the Pacific Northwest, at 67 years of age, Hill moved to Hood River, Oregon and opened a studio. His time had passed, however, and he could not find clients for his works and he died quietly on August 27,1923 at the Cottage Hospital in Hood River. He was buried by the Hood River Masonic Lodge who were given Hills paintings and studio effects towards payment of his hospital bills and he was buried in an unmarked grave at the Idlewilde Cemetery in Hood River. Sixty years after his death, a marker was placed on his gravesite through the generosity of Robert A. Goldberg, the marker reads, EDWARD HILL,18431923, ARTIST. Natures Nobleman, Edward Hill and His Art, Historical New Hampshire, Vol.44, Nos.1 &2, Spring/Summer,1989
13.
Taunton, Massachusetts
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It is the seat of Bristol County. Taunton is situated on the Taunton River which winds its way through the city on its way to Mount Hope Bay,10 miles to the south, at the 2010 census, the city had a population of 55,874. The current mayor is Thomas Hoye, Jr, founded in 1637 by members of the Plymouth Colony, Taunton is one of the oldest towns in the United States. The Native Americans called the region Cohannet, Tetiquet and Titicut before the arrival of the Europeans. Taunton is also known as the Silver City, as it was a center of the silver industry beginning in the 19th century when companies such as Reed & Barton. Rogers, Poole Silver, and others produced fine-quality silver goods in the city, since December 1914, the city of Taunton has provided a large annual light display each December on Taunton Green, giving it the additional nickname of Christmas City. The original boundaries of Taunton included the now occupied by many surrounding towns, including Norton, Easton, Mansfield, Dighton, Raynham, Berkley. Possession of the latter is noted by the naming of Taunton Hill in Assonet. Taunton was founded by settlers from England and officially incorporated as a town on September 3,1639, most of the towns settlers were originally from Taunton in Somerset, England, which led early settlers to name the settlement after that town. At the time of Tauntons incorporation, they explained their choice of name as being, in honour, prior to 1640, the Taunton area was called Cohannet, Tetiquet or Titiquet. Plymouth Colony was formally divided into counties on June 2,1685, the counties of Plymouth Colony were transferred to the Province of Massachusetts Bay on the arrival of its charter and governor on May 14,1692. The Taunton area has been the site of skirmishes and battles during various conflicts, including King Philips War, Taunton was re-incorporated as a city on May 11,1864. In 1656, the first successful iron works in Plymouth Colony was established on the Two Mile River, the Taunton Iron Works operated for over 200 years until 1876. It was the first of many industries in Taunton. During the 19th century, Taunton became known as the Silver City, as it was home to many silversmithing operations, including Reed & Barton, F. B. In the 19th century, Taunton was also the center of an important iron-making industry, the iron industry in Taunton produced a variety of goods including stoves, tacks and machinery. One of the more successful companies during this period was the Mason Machine Works, founded by William Mason, the Taunton Locomotive Works also operated in the city during this time. Taunton was also home to textile mills and other industries, such as felt
14.
Peter F. Rothermel
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Peter Frederick Rothermel was an American painter. Rothermel was born in Nescopeck, Pennsylvania on July 8,1812, although various sources give his year as 1813,1814. The artists gravestone in Philadelphia gives the date as 1812 and he had a common-school education, and studied land surveying. At age 20, he moved to Philadelphia and became a sign painter, then at age 22, he took up the study of art. He was instructed in drawing by John Rubens Smith, and subsequently became a pupil of Bass Otis in Philadelphia and his 1844 work De Soto discovering the Mississippi was purchased by the Art Union and marked his first success as an artist. He served as president of the Artists Fund Society in 1844. During 1856-1859 he was in Europe, residing for about two years in Rome, and visiting also the cities in England, France, Germany, Belgium. On his return to the United States, he settled in Philadelphia again and he specialized in portraits and dramatic historical paintings. His most famous paintings include Patrick Henry before the Virginia House of Burgesses and this latter work was commissioned by Gettysburg lawyer David McConaughy. Another of his more popular works is Columbus Before the Queen. In 1877, he moved from Philadelphia to “Grassmere, ” his country home near Linfield, Pennsylvania and his estate still exists today on Limerick Center Road, it is now a residential site. Rothermels son, Peter F. Rothermel, Jr. was District Attorney of Philadelphia, lehigh University webpage for Rothermel Gilman, D. C. Thurston, H. T. Colby, F. M. eds, ripley, George, Dana, Charles A. eds
15.
New Hampshire
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New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, New Hampshire is the 5th smallest by land area and the 9th least populous of the 50 United States. Concord is the capital, while Manchester is the largest city in the state and in northern New England, including Vermont. It has no sales tax, nor is personal income taxed at either the state or local level. The New Hampshire primary is the first primary in the U. S. presidential election cycle and its license plates carry the state motto, Live Free or Die. The states nickname, The Granite State, refers to its extensive granite formations, the state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire by Captain John Mason. New Hampshire is part of the New England region and it is bounded by Quebec, Canada, to the north and northwest, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Massachusetts to the south, and Vermont to the west. New Hampshires major regions are the Great North Woods, the White Mountains, the Lakes Region, the Seacoast, the Merrimack Valley, the Monadnock Region, and the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee area. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any U. S. coastal state, New Hampshire was home to the rock formation called the Old Man of the Mountain, a face-like profile in Franconia Notch, until the formation disintegrated in May 2003. Major rivers include the 110-mile Merrimack River, which bisects the lower half of the state north–south and ends up in Newburyport and its tributaries include the Contoocook River, Pemigewasset River, and Winnipesaukee River. The 410-mile Connecticut River, which starts at New Hampshires Connecticut Lakes and flows south to Connecticut, only one town – Pittsburg – shares a land border with the state of Vermont. The northwesternmost headwaters of the Connecticut also define the Canada–U. S, the Piscataqua River and its several tributaries form the states only significant ocean port where they flow into the Atlantic at Portsmouth. The Salmon Falls River and the Piscataqua define the southern portion of the border with Maine, the U. S. Supreme Court dismissed the case in 2002, leaving ownership of the island with Maine. New Hampshire still claims sovereignty of the base, however, the largest of New Hampshires lakes is Lake Winnipesaukee, which covers 71 square miles in the east-central part of New Hampshire. Umbagog Lake along the Maine border, approximately 12.3 square miles, is a distant second, Squam Lake is the second largest lake entirely in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has the shortest ocean coastline of any state in the United States, Hampton Beach is a popular local summer destination. It is the state with the highest percentage of area in the country. New Hampshire is in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome, much of the state, in particular the White Mountains, is covered by the conifers and northern hardwoods of the New England-Acadian forests
16.
Hudson River School
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The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by romanticism. Neither the originator of the term Hudson River School nor its first published use has been fixed with certainty, the term is thought to have originated with the New York Tribune art critic Clarence Cook or the landscape painter Homer Dodge Martin. As originally used, the term was meant disparagingly, as the work so labeled had gone out of favor after the plein-air Barbizon School had come into vogue among American patrons and collectors. Hudson River School paintings reflect three themes of America in the 19th century, discovery, exploration, and settlement, the paintings also depict the American landscape as a pastoral setting, where human beings and nature coexist peacefully. They took as their inspiration such European masters as Claude Lorrain, John Constable and their reverence for Americas natural beauty was shared with contemporary American writers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Several painters were members of the Düsseldorf school of painting, others were educated by the German Paul Weber, while the elements of the paintings were rendered realistically, many of the scenes were composed as a synthesis of multiple scenes or natural images observed by the artists. During these expeditions, the artists recorded sketches and memories, returning to their studios to paint the works later. The artist Thomas Cole is generally acknowledged as the founder of the Hudson River School, Cole took a steamship up the Hudson in the autumn of 1825, the same year the Erie Canal opened, stopping first at West Point, then at Catskill landing. He hiked west high up into the eastern Catskill Mountains of New York State to paint the first landscapes of the area, the first review of his work appeared in the New York Evening Post on November 22,1825. At that time, only the English native Cole, born in a landscape where autumnal tints were of browns and yellows, coles close friend, Asher Durand, became a prominent figure in the school as well. An important part of the popularity of the Hudson River School was its celebration of its themes of nationalism, nature, however, its leading artists, such as Thomas Cole, were also suspicious of the economic and technological development of the age. Works by artists of this generation are often described as examples of Luminism. In addition to pursuing their art, many of the artists, including Kensett, Gifford, most of the finest works of the Hudson River school were painted between 1855 and 1875. During that time, artists such as Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt were celebrities and they were both influenced by the Düsseldorf school of painting, and Bierstadt had studied in that city for several years. When Church exhibited paintings such as Niagara or Icebergs of the North, thousands of people lined up around the block and paid fifty cents a head to view the solitary works. The epic size of the landscapes in these paintings, unexampled in earlier American painting, reminded Americans of the vast, untamed, such works were being painted during the period of settlement of the American West, preservation of national parks, and establishment of green city parks. One of the largest collections of paintings by artists of the Hudson River School is at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Johnsbury Athenaeum, in St. Johnsbury, VT Westervelt Warner Museum of American Art, in Tuscaloosa, AL Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid, Spain. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, avery, Kevin J. & Kelly, Frank
17.
Benjamin Champney
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Benjamin Champney was a painter whose name has become synonymous with White Mountain art of the 19th century. He began his training as a lithographer under celebrated marine artist Fitz Henry Lane at Pendletons Lithography shop in Boston. Most art historians consider him the founder of the North Conway Colony of painters who came to North Conway, New Hampshire and his paintings were often used to make chromolithographs that were subsequently sold to tourists who could not afford Champneys originals. He exhibited regularly at the Boston Athenæum and was a founder of the Boston Art Club Champney was born in New Ipswich and he first visited Conway in 1838. In 1841, Champney went to France to study, returning to Boston in 1846 and he returned to Boston in 1848 and exhibited the panorama there in December. It was subsequently exhibited in Worcester, Massachusetts, New Haven, Connecticut, in 1854, he went on a painting trip to Germany and Switzerland with John Frederick Kensett. The panorama, unfortunately, was destroyed by fire in New York City in October 1857, in 1850, Champney returned to the White Mountains with his friend, Kensett. Their enthusiasm and paintings drew large numbers of Boston and New York artists to the Conway area, in 1853, Champney married and bought a house between Conway and North Conway. It would be his home for over fifty years. His studio was a social center, and was visited by many people from all parts of the country. In 1855, Champney became a founder of the Boston Art Club, on August 4,1888, The White Mountain Echo reported, Champneys studio is as much visited as ever this summer, and there are many new pictures to see. But perhaps the very prettiest is the pitcher in the kitchen window. In 1900, he published an autobiography, Sixty Years Memories of Art, Champney died in Woburn, Massachusetts on December 11,1907. In recognition of his unique and lasting contribution to the arts and culture of Boston, beauty Caught and Kept, Benjamin Champney in the White Mountains. Historical New Hampshire, Vol.51, Nos. 3&4, New Hampshire Scenery, Canaan, NH, Phoenix Publishing,1985. Sixty Years Memories of Art and Artists, Woburn, MA, worldCat White Mountain paintings by Benjamin Champney Champney, Benjamin
18.
San Francisco
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San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California. It is the birthplace of the United Nations, the California Gold Rush of 1849 brought rapid growth, making it the largest city on the West Coast at the time. San Francisco became a consolidated city-county in 1856, after three-quarters of the city was destroyed by the 1906 earthquake and fire, San Francisco was quickly rebuilt, hosting the Panama-Pacific International Exposition nine years later. In World War II, San Francisco was a port of embarkation for service members shipping out to the Pacific Theater. Politically, the city votes strongly along liberal Democratic Party lines, San Francisco is also the headquarters of five major banking institutions and various other companies such as Levi Strauss & Co. Dolby, Airbnb, Weebly, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Yelp, Pinterest, Twitter, Uber, Lyft, Mozilla, Wikimedia Foundation, as of 2016, San Francisco is ranked high on world liveability rankings. The earliest archaeological evidence of habitation of the territory of the city of San Francisco dates to 3000 BC. Upon independence from Spain in 1821, the became part of Mexico. Under Mexican rule, the system gradually ended, and its lands became privatized. In 1835, Englishman William Richardson erected the first independent homestead, together with Alcalde Francisco de Haro, he laid out a street plan for the expanded settlement, and the town, named Yerba Buena, began to attract American settlers. Commodore John D. Sloat claimed California for the United States on July 7,1846, during the Mexican–American War, montgomery arrived to claim Yerba Buena two days later. Yerba Buena was renamed San Francisco on January 30 of the next year, despite its attractive location as a port and naval base, San Francisco was still a small settlement with inhospitable geography. The California Gold Rush brought a flood of treasure seekers, with their sourdough bread in tow, prospectors accumulated in San Francisco over rival Benicia, raising the population from 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 by December 1849. The promise of fabulous riches was so strong that crews on arriving vessels deserted and rushed off to the gold fields, leaving behind a forest of masts in San Francisco harbor. Some of these approximately 500 abandoned ships were used at times as storeships, saloons and hotels, many were left to rot, by 1851 the harbor was extended out into the bay by wharves while buildings were erected on piles among the ships. By 1870 Yerba Buena Cove had been filled to create new land, buried ships are occasionally exposed when foundations are dug for new buildings. California was quickly granted statehood in 1850 and the U. S. military built Fort Point at the Golden Gate, silver discoveries, including the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1859, further drove rapid population growth. With hordes of fortune seekers streaming through the city, lawlessness was common, and the Barbary Coast section of town gained notoriety as a haven for criminals, prostitution, entrepreneurs sought to capitalize on the wealth generated by the Gold Rush
19.
Carleton Watkins
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Carleton Watkins was an American photographer of the 19th century. Born in New York, he moved to California and quickly became interested in photography and he focused mainly on landscape photography, and Yosemite Valley was a favorite subject of his. His photographs of the valley significantly influenced the United States Congress’ decision to preserve it as a National Park, Watkins was born on November 11,1829, the eldest of eight children. His parents were John and Julia Watkins, a carpenter and an innkeeper, born in Oneonta, New York, he was a hunter and fisherman and was involved in the glee club and Presbyterian Church Choir. In 1851, Watkins and his childhood friend Collis Huntington moved to San Francisco with hopes of finding gold, although they did not succeed in this specific venture, both became successful. Watkins became known for his skills, and Huntington became one of the “Big Four” owners of the Central Pacific Railroad. This would later be helpful for Watkins, during the first two years in San Francisco, Watkins did not work in photography. He originally worked for his friend Huntington, delivering supplies to mining operations and he did this before working as a store clerk at a George Murray’s Bookstore, near the studio of Robert H. Vance, a well-known Daguerreotypist. An employee of Vance’s unexpectedly left his job, and Watkins’ agreeable personality led to his looking after the studio, before his work with Vance, Watkins knew nothing about photography. Vance showed him the elements of photography, planning to return. However, when he came back, he found that Watkins had excelled at the art while he was away, by 1858, Watkins was ready to begin his own photography business. He did many commissions, including “Illustrated California Magazine” for James Mason Hutchings and he made Daguerreotype stereoviews at the “Almaden Quicksilver Mines. ”These were used in a widely publicized court case, which furthered his reputation as a photographer. In July 1861, Watkins made the decision that changed his career and he brought his mammoth-plate camera and his stereoscopic camera. The stereoscopic camera was used to give the depth. The photographer returned with thirty mammoth plate and one hundred stereo view negatives and these were some of the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East. In 1864, Watkins was hired to make photographs of Yosemite for the California State Geological Survey, in 1867, Watkins opened his first public gallery, in addition to sending his photographs to the Universal Exposition in Paris, where he won a medal. This became his lavish Yosemite Art Gallery and he displayed over a hundred large Pacific Coast views in addition over a thousand images available through stereoscopes. Despite his success as an artist, he was not successful as a businessman, not only did Watkins lose his studio to Cook, he also lost its contents
20.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
21.
West Coast of the United States
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The West Coast or Pacific Coast is the coastline along which the contiguous Western United States meets the North Pacific Ocean. As a region, this term most often refers to the states of California. More specifically, it refers to an area defined on the east by the Cascade Range, Sierra Nevada and Mojave Desert, the U. S. Census groups the five states of California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii together as the Pacific States division. As of the 2010 Census, the population of the Census Bureaus Pacific Region was approximately 47.8 million – about 15. 3% of US population. The largest city on the west coast of the United States is Los Angeles, small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers migrated alongside herds of large herbivores far into Alaska. Between 16,500 BCE and 13,500 BCE, ice-free corridors developed along the Pacific coast and valleys of North America, Alaska Natives, indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, and California indigenous peoples eventually descended from the Paleo-Indians. They developed various languages and established trade routes, later, Spanish, British, French, Russian, and American explorers and settlers began colonizing the area. The West Coast of the United States has a climate in its Northern edge towards the Canada–US border. The coastline sees significantly mild temperatures when compared to the areas during summer. In far Northern California there is a difference of 17 °C between Eurekas and Willow Creek in spite of only 25 miles separating the locations and Willow Creek being located at a 500 metres elevation, coastal fog is also prevalent in keeping shoreline temperatures cool. Since the West Coast has been populated by more recently than the East Coast. Additionally, its demographic composition underlies its cultural difference from the rest of the United States. Californias history first as a major Spanish colony, and later Mexican territory, has given the lower West Coast a distinctive Hispanic tone, which it also shares with the rest of the Southwest. Similarly, two of the three cities in which Asian Americans have concentrated, San Francisco and Los Angeles, are located on the West Coast, San Franciscos Chinatown, the oldest in North America, is a vibrant cultural center. The West Coast also has a large share of green cities within the United States. Other writers, like Jean Baudrillard, Mike Davis, and Umberto Eco, have made related statements on Californian culture, in the Northwest, Portland and Seattle are both considered among the coffee capitals of the world. While Starbucks originated in Seattle, both towns are known for coffee roasters and independent coffeeshops. In the Pacific Northwest at large, which includes the Canadian west coast, the culture has significantly shaped by the environment, especially by its forests, mountains
22.
Mount Lafayette
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Mount Lafayette is a 5, 249-foot mountain at the northern end of the Franconia Range in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, United States. It lies in the town of Franconia in Grafton County, the mountains upper reaches are located in the alpine zone, an area where only dwarf vegetation exists due to the harsh climate. Mount Lafayette is the highest point in the Franconia Range, a line of peaks along the east side of Franconia Notch and it is the sixth highest peak in New Hampshire and the highest outside of the Presidential Range. It is the second most prominent peak in the state, on the western side, its lower slopes lie inside Franconia Notch State Park. The remainder of the lies within the White Mountain National Forest. The summit marks the border of the Pemigewasset Wilderness Area within the WMNF. A variety of lead up over 3,000 vertical feet to its exposed summit. The Greenleaf Trail begins at the lot for the Cannon Mountain tramway and ascends to the Appalachian Mountain Clubs Greenleaf Hut. The peak is at the junction of the Garfield Ridge Trail, which follows the ridge northeast to Mount Garfield, and the Franconia Ridge Trail, which leads south to Mounts Lincoln, Liberty, and Flume. Both the Garfield Ridge Trail and the Franconia Ridge Trail form part of the Appalachian Trail, a very popular hike is to make a loop combining the three most notable summits of the Franconia Range. The loop starts with the Old Bridle Path to the AMC Greenleaf Hut, from there, one takes the Greenleaf Trail to the summit of Mt. Lafayette. This loop is 8.9 miles long, with an elevation gain of about 3,900 feet. The mountain is named to honor General Lafayette, a French military hero who fought with and significantly aided the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War
23.
Mount Shasta
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Mount Shasta is a potentially active volcano at the southern end of the Cascade Range in Siskiyou County, California. At an elevation of 14,179 feet, it is the second highest peak in the Cascades, Mount Shasta has an estimated volume of 85 cubic miles, which makes it the most voluminous stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc. The mountain and its area are managed by the U. S. Forest Service as part of the Shasta–Trinity National Forest. Mount Shasta is connected to nearby Shastina, and they dominate the northern California landscape and it rises abruptly and stands nearly 10,000 ft above the surrounding terrain. On a clear day, snowy Mount Shasta can be seen from the floor of the Central Valley 140 miles to the south. The mountain has attracted the attention of poets, authors, if Shastina were a separate mountain, it would rank as the fourth-highest peak of the Cascade Range. Mount Shastas surface is free of deep glacial erosion except, paradoxically. This is the largest glacial valley on the volcano, although it not now have a glacier in it. There are seven named glaciers on Mount Shasta, with the four largest radiating down from high on the summit cone to below 10,000 ft primarily on the north. The Whitney Glacier is the longest, and the Hotlum is the most voluminous glacier in the state of California. Three of the smaller named glaciers occupy cirques near and above 11,000 ft on the south and southeast sides, including the Watkins, Konwakiton, and Mud Creek glaciers. The oldest known human habitation in the dates to about 7,000 years ago. The historic eruption of Mount Shasta in 1786 may have been observed by Lapérouse, although perhaps first seen by Spanish explorers, the first reliably reported land sighting of Mount Shasta by a European or American was by Peter Skene Ogden in 1826. In 1827, the name Sasty or Sastise was given to nearby Mount McLoughlin by Ogden, the name was transferred to present-day Mount Shasta in 1841, partly as a result of work by the United States Exploring Expedition. Beginning in the 1820s, Mount Shasta was a prominent landmark along what became known as the Siskiyou Trail, the Siskiyou Trail was on the track of an ancient trade and travel route of Native American footpaths between Californias Central Valley and the Pacific Northwest. The California Gold Rush brought the first Euro-American settlements into the area in the early 1850s, including at Yreka, California, the first recorded ascent of Mount Shasta occurred in 1854, after several earlier failed attempts. In 1856, the first women reached the summit, by the 1860s and 1870s, Mount Shasta was the subject of scientific and literary interest. A book by California pioneer and entrepreneur James Hutchings, titled Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity in California, the summit was achieved by John Muir, Josiah Whitney, Clarence King, and John Wesley Powell
24.
Alaska
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Alaska is a U. S. state located in the northwest extremity of North America. To the north are the Chukchi and Beaufort seas–the southern parts of the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean lies to the south and southwest. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area, the 3rd least populous, approximately half of Alaskas residents live within the Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaskas economy is dominated by the fishing, natural gas, military bases and tourism are also a significant part of the economy. The United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire on March 30,1867, the area went through several administrative changes before becoming organized as a territory on May 11,1912. It was admitted as the 49th state of the U. S. on January 3,1959, the name Alaska was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut, or Unangam idiom, which refers to the mainland of Alaska. Literally, it means object to which the action of the sea is directed, Alaska is the northernmost and westernmost state in the United States and has the most easterly longitude in the United States because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. Alaska is the only non-contiguous U. S. state on continental North America and it is technically part of the continental U. S. but is sometimes not included in colloquial use, Alaska is not part of the contiguous U. S. often called the Lower 48. The capital city, Juneau, is situated on the mainland of the North American continent but is not connected by road to the rest of the North American highway system. Alaskas territorial waters touch Russias territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island, Alaska has a longer coastline than all the other U. S. states combined. Alaska is the largest state in the United States by total area at 663,268 square miles, over twice the size of Texas, Alaska is larger than all but 18 sovereign countries. Counting territorial waters, Alaska is larger than the area of the next three largest states, Texas, California, and Montana. It is also larger than the area of the 22 smallest U. S. states. Also referred to as the Panhandle or Inside Passage, this is the region of Alaska closest to the rest of the United States, as such, this was where most of the initial non-indigenous settlement occurred in the years following the Alaska Purchase. The region is dominated by the Alexander Archipelago as well as the Tongass National Forest and it contains the state capital Juneau, the former capital Sitka, and Ketchikan, at one time Alaskas largest city. The Alaska Marine Highway provides a vital transportation link throughout the area. The Interior is the largest region of Alaska, much of it is uninhabited wilderness, Fairbanks is the only large city in the region
25.
John Muir
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His letters, essays, and books describing his adventures in nature, especially in the Sierra Nevada, have been read by millions. His activism has helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park, the Sierra Club, which he founded, is a prominent American conservation organization. The 211-mile John Muir Trail, a trail in the Sierra Nevada, was named in his honor. Other such places include Muir Woods National Monument, Muir Beach, John Muir College, Mount Muir, in Scotland, the John Muir Way, a 130-mile-long route, was named in honor of him. In his later life, Muir devoted most of his time to the preservation of the Western forests and he petitioned the U. S. Congress for the National Park bill that was passed in 1890, establishing Yosemite National Park. The spiritual quality and enthusiasm toward nature expressed in his writings has inspired readers, including presidents and congressmen, today Muir is referred to as the Father of the National Parks and the National Park Service has produced a short documentary about his life. John Muir has been considered an inspiration to both Scots and Americans, Muirs biographer, Steven J. Holmes, believes that Muir has become one of the patron saints of twentieth-century American environmental activity, both political and recreational. As a result, his writings are discussed in books and journals. Muir has profoundly shaped the very categories through which Americans understand and envision their relationships with the natural world, on April 21,2013, the first ever John Muir Day was celebrated in Scotland, which marked the 175th anniversary of his birth, paying homage to the conservationist. John Muirs Birthplace is a stone house in Dunbar, East Lothian. His parents were Daniel Muir and Ann Gilrye and he was the third of eight children, Margaret, Sarah, David, Daniel, Ann and Mary, and the American-born Joanna. His earliest recollections were of taking short walks with his grandfather when he was three, author Amy Marquis notes that he began his love affair with nature while young, and implies that it may have been in reaction to his strict religious upbringing. His father believed that anything that distracted from Bible studies was frivolous, but the young Muir was a restless spirit and especially prone to lashings. As a young boy, Muir became fascinated with the East Lothian landscape and it was during this time that he became interested in natural history and the works of Scottish naturalist Alexander Wilson. Although he spent the majority of his life in America, Muir never forgot his roots in Scotland and he held a strong connection with his birthplace and Scottish identity throughout his life and was frequently heard talking about his childhood spent amid the East Lothian countryside. He greatly admired the works of Thomas Carlyle and poetry of Robert Burns and he returned to Scotland on a trip in 1893, where he met one of his Dunbar schoolmates and visited the places of his youth that were etched in his memory. He also never lost his strong Scottish accent after many years living in America, in 1849, Muirs family immigrated to the United States, starting a farm near Portage, Wisconsin, called Fountain Lake Farm. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark, by age 11, young Muir had learned to recite by heart and by sore flesh all of the New Testament and most of the Old Testament
26.
Wawona Hotel
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The Wawona Hotel is a historic hotel located within southern Yosemite National Park, in California. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1987, and is on the National Register of Historic Places, the Wawona Hotel is one of the oldest mountain resort hotels in California, and a classic of Victorian era resort design. The Victorian style hotel was built in 1876 to serve tourists visiting the nearby Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, as tourism increased, through 1916, the hotel built additional rooms and facilities. In addition, it cut more forest trails, as well as paths along the fork of the Merced River. The Wawona Hotel is located 4 miles from the south entrance. It is one of the few historical period hotels still standing within Yosemite National Parks boundaries. Most of the hotels 104 guestrooms open onto one of the Wawona Hotels deep verandas, the hotel includes six historically distinctive buildings, built between 1876 and 1916. The rooms are furnished with antiques, period pieces, and vintage elements, the hotel has no telephones or televisions in the guestrooms. Outdoor recreation choices include quiet nature walks or scenic drives, across from the hotel is a nine-hole 3,035 yards, par 35 golf course, Yosemite Parks only such facility. It is one of the few within any U. S. National Park, the course is open daily from spring to fall, weather permitting. In operation since 1918, the course is the oldest in the Sierra Nevada. Thomas Hill, a landscape painter of the Hudson River School. He used the pavilion as his painting studio and completed numerous works of the region. This is listed separately on the National Register of Historic Places, history of the Yosemite area List of the northern Giant Sequoia groves —3 in Yosemite. The Wawona Hotel and Thomas Hill Studio, architecture in the Parks, A National Historic Landmark Theme Study. CA-1805, Wawona Hotel, Wawona, Mariposa County, CA HABS No, cA-1805-A, Wawona Hotel, Long White HABS No. CA-1805-B, Wawona Hotel, Hotel HABS No, cA-1805-C, Wawona Hotel, Little White HABS No. CA-1805-D, Wawona Hotel, Thomas Hill Studio HABS No, cA-1805-E, Wawona Hotel, Little Brown HABS No
27.
Coronado, California
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Coronado, since the 1980s also mistakenly known as Coronado Island, is a resort city located in San Diego County, California, across and around San Diego Bay from downtown San Diego. Its population was 24,697 at the 2010 census, up from 24,100 at the 2000 census and it is part of San Diego County, California. Coronado lies on the combination of an island and a tombolo connected to the mainland called the Silver Strand. Coronado is an island, connected by a tombolo. In 2012, Dr. Stephen Leatherman, Director of the Laboratory for Coastal Research, Coronado is Spanish for crowned one, and thus it is nicknamed The Crown City. Three ships of the United States Navy have been named after the city, Coronado was incorporated as a town on December 11,1890. The land was purchased by Elisha Spurr Babcock, along with Hampton L. Story and their intention was to create a resort community, and in 1886, the Coronado Beach Company was organized. By 1888, they had built the Hotel del Coronado, and they also built a schoolhouse, and formed athletic, boating, and baseball clubs. In 1900, an area just south of the Hotel del Coronado was established by John D. Spreckels. Over the years the tents gave way to cottages, the last of which was torn down in late 1940 or early 1941 and these streetcars became a fixture of the city until their retirement in 1939. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of 32.7 square miles,20.5 km² of the city is land and 24.7 square miles of it is water. Geographically, Cornado is not an island and it is a tied island, connected to the mainland by a strip of land called the Silver Strand. This tombolo, along with Coronado and North Island, forms San Diego Bay, originally, Coronado was mostly separated from North Island by a shallow inlet of water called the Spanish Bight, but just like Coronado, North Island was never completely surrounded by water. The development of North Island by the United States Navy prior to and during World War II led to the filling of the bight by July 1944, the Navy still operates Naval Air Station North Island on Coronado. On the southern side of the town is Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, both facilities are part of the larger Naval Base Coronado complex. Though there has been localized development of the coastline, including some minor landfill, in 1969, the San Diego–Coronado Bridge was opened, allowing much faster transit between the cities than bay ferries or driving via State Route 75 along the Silver Strand. The city is currently weighing the options of additional construction on Highway 75 to alleviate congestion as traffic flows to and from San Diego, according to the Köppen climate classification system, Coronado has a semi-arid climate, abbreviated BSk on climate maps. The 2010 United States Census reported that Coronado city had a population of 24,697
28.
San Diego
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San Diego is a major city in California, United States. It is in San Diego County, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, approximately 120 miles south of Los Angeles and immediately adjacent to the border with Mexico. With an estimated population of 1,394,928 as of July 1,2015, San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest in California. It is part of the San Diego–Tijuana conurbation, the second-largest transborder agglomeration between the US and a country after Detroit–Windsor, with a population of 4,922,723 people. San Diego has been called the birthplace of California, historically home to the Kumeyaay people, San Diego was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the area for Spain, the Presidio and Mission San Diego de Alcalá, founded in 1769, formed the first European settlement in what is now California. In 1821, San Diego became part of the newly independent Mexico, in 1850, California became part of the United States following the Mexican–American War and the admission of California to the union. The city is the seat of San Diego County and is the center of the region as well as the San Diego–Tijuana metropolitan area. San Diegos main economic engines are military and defense-related activities, tourism, international trade, the presence of the University of California, San Diego, with the affiliated UCSD Medical Center, has helped make the area a center of research in biotechnology. The original inhabitants of the region are now known as the San Dieguito, the area of San Diego has been inhabited by the Kumeyaay people. The first European to visit the region was Portuguese-born explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailing under the flag of Castile, sailing his flagship San Salvador from Navidad, New Spain, Cabrillo claimed the bay for the Spanish Empire in 1542, and named the site San Miguel. In November 1602, Sebastián Vizcaíno was sent to map the California coast, in May 1769, Gaspar de Portolà established the Fort Presidio of San Diego on a hill near the San Diego River. It was the first settlement by Europeans in what is now the state of California, in July of the same year, Mission San Diego de Alcalá was founded by Franciscan friars under Junípero Serra. By 1797, the mission boasted the largest native population in Alta California, with over 1,400 neophytes living in, Mission San Diego was the southern anchor in California of the historic mission trail El Camino Real. Both the Presidio and the Mission are National Historic Landmarks, in 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain, and San Diego became part of the Mexican territory of Alta California. In 1822, Mexico began attempting to extend its authority over the territory of Alta California. The fort on Presidio Hill was gradually abandoned, while the town of San Diego grew up on the land below Presidio Hill. The Mission was secularized by the Mexican government in 1833, the 432 residents of the town petitioned the governor to form a pueblo, and Juan María Osuna was elected the first alcalde, defeating Pío Pico in the vote
29.
Santa Barbara, California
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Santa Barbara is the county seat of Santa Barbara County in the U. S. state of California. Situated on a section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States. Santa Barbaras climate is described as Mediterranean, and the city has been promoted as the American Riviera. The population of the county in 2010 was 423,895. In 2004, the sector accounted for fully 35% of local employment. Education in particular is well represented, with four institutions of learning on the south coast. The Santa Barbara Airport serves the city, as does Amtrak, U. S. Highway 101 connects the Santa Barbara area with Los Angeles to the southeast and San Francisco to the northwest. Behind the city, in and beyond the Santa Ynez Mountains, is the Los Padres National Forest, Channel Islands National Park and Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary are located approximately 20 miles offshore. Evidence of human habitation of the area begins at least 13,000 years ago, an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Chumash lived on the south coast of Santa Barbara County at the time of the first European explorations. Five Chumash villages flourished in the area, portuguese explorer João Cabrilho, sailing for the Kingdom of Spain, sailed through what is now called the Santa Barbara Channel in 1542, anchoring briefly in the area. In 1602, Spanish maritime explorer Sebastián Vizcaíno gave the name Santa Barbara to the channel, a land expedition led by Gaspar de Portolà visited in 1769, and Franciscan missionary Juan Crespi, who accompanied the expedition, named a large native town Laguna de la Concepcion. Cabrillos earlier name, however, is the one that has survived, the first permanent European residents were Spanish missionaries and soldiers under Felipe de Neve, who came in 1782 to build the Presidio. They were sent both to fortify the region against expansion by other such as England and Russia. Many of the Spaniards brought their families with them, and those formed the nucleus of the small town – at first just a cluster of adobes – that surrounded the Presidio, the Santa Barbara Mission was established on the Feast of Saint Barbara, December 4,1786. It was the tenth of the California Missions to be founded by the Spanish Franciscans and it was dedicated by Padre Fermín Lasuén, who succeeded Padre Junipero Serra as the second president and founder of the California Franciscan Mission Chain. The Mission fathers began the work of converting the native Chumash to Christianity. The Chumash laborers built a connection between the creek and the Santa Barbara Mission water system through the use of a dam. During the following decades, many of the natives died of such as smallpox
30.
Mountain View Cemetery (Oakland, California)
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The Mountain View Cemetery is a large 226-acre cemetery in Oakland, Alameda County, California. It was established in 1863 by a group of East Bay pioneers under the California Rural Cemetery Act of 1859, the association they formed still operates the cemetery today. Mountain View was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the architect who also designed New York Citys Central Park and much of UC Berkeley. Because of this, and its setting, the cemetery is a tourist draw. Olmsteds intent was to create a space that would express a harmony between humankind and the natural setting, in the view of 19th century English and American romantics, park-like cemeteries, such as Mountain View, represented the peace of nature, to which humanitys soul returns. Olmsted, drawing upon the concepts of American Transcendentalism, integrated Parisian grand monuments, adjoining Mountain View Cemetery is Saint Mary Cemetery and the Chapel of the Chimes mausoleum and columbarium. There are many notable people interred in Mountain View, many are local figures in California history, English, US Representative California John B. Perkins, Governor of California 1880–1883, U. S. Senator, John Swett, Founder of the California Public School System. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System, Mountain View Cemetery
31.
Oakland, California
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Oakland /ˈoʊklənd/ is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. The city was incorporated in 1852, Oaklands territory covers what was once a mosaic of California coastal terrace prairie, oak woodland, and north coastal scrub. Its land served as a resource when its hillside oak and redwood timber were logged to build San Francisco. In the late 1860s, Oakland was selected as the terminal of the Transcontinental Railroad. Following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, many San Francisco citizens moved to Oakland, enlarging the citys population, increasing its housing stock and it continued to grow in the 20th century with its busy port, shipyards, and a thriving automobile manufacturing industry. Oakland is known for its sustainability practices, including a top-ranking for usage of electricity from renewable resources, in addition, due to a steady influx of immigrants during the 20th century, along with thousands of African-American war-industry workers who relocated from the Deep South during the 1940s. Oakland is the most ethnically diverse city in the country. The earliest known inhabitants were the Huchiun Indians, who lived there for thousands of years, the Huchiun belonged to a linguistic grouping later called the Ohlone. In Oakland, they were concentrated around Lake Merritt and Temescal Creek, in 1772, the area that later became Oakland was claimed, with the rest of California, by Spanish settlers for the King of Spain. In the early 19th century, the Spanish crown granted the East Bay area to Luis María Peralta for his Rancho San Antonio, the grant was confirmed by the successor Mexican republic upon its independence from Spain. Upon his death in 1842, Peralta divided his land among his four sons, Most of Oakland fell within the shares given to Antonio Maria and Vicente. The portion of the parcel that is now Oakland was called encinal—Spanish for oak grove—due to the oak forest that covered the area. In 1851, three men—Horace Carpentier, Edson Adams, and Andrew Moon—began developing what is now downtown Oakland, on May 4,1852, the Town of Oakland incorporated. Two years later, on March 25,1854, Oakland re-incorporated as the City of Oakland, with Horace Carpentier elected the first mayor, the city and its environs quickly grew with the railroads, becoming a major rail terminal in the late 1860s and 1870s. In 1868, the Central Pacific constructed the Oakland Long Wharf at Oakland Point, a number of horsecar and cable car lines were constructed in Oakland during the latter half of the 19th century. The first electric streetcar set out from Oakland to Berkeley in 1891, at the time of incorporation, Oakland consisted of the territory that lay south of todays major intersection of San Pablo Avenue, Broadway, and Fourteenth Street. The city gradually annexed farmlands and settlements to the east and the north, Oaklands rise to industrial prominence, and its subsequent need for a seaport, led to the digging of a shipping and tidal channel in 1902. This resulted in the town of Alameda being made an island
32.
En plein air
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En plein air, or plein air painting, is a phrase borrowed from the French equivalent meaning open air. It is particularly used to describe the act of painting outdoors, also called French, peinture sur le motif and this method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules, those might create a predetermined look. En plein air can also be used to other activities where a person partakes in an outdoor environment. Artists have long painted outdoors, but in the century, working in natural light became particularly important to the Barbizon school, Hudson River School. The Newlyn School in England is considered another major proponent of the technique in the latter 19th century, the popularity of painting en plein air increased in the 1840s with the introduction of paints in tubes. Previously, painters made their own paints by grinding and mixing dry pigment powders with linseed oil, the act of outdoor painting from observation has been continually popular well into the 21st century. It was during the century that the box easel, typically known as the French box easel or field easel, was invented. It is uncertain who developed it, but these highly portable easels with telescopic legs and built-in paint box and palette made it easier to go into the forest and up the hillsides. Still made today, they remain a popular choice since they fold up to the size of a brief case and thus are easy to store. The Pochade Box is a box that allows the artist to keep all of their supplies. Some designs allow for a canvas which can be held by clamps built into the lid. There are designs which can hold a few wet painting canvases or panels within the lid. These boxes have a rising popularity as while they are used for plein air painting, can also be used in the studio, home. Since pochade boxes are used for painting on location, the canvas or work surface may be small. Challenges include the type of paint used to paint outdoors, animals, bugs, onlookers, acrylic paint may harden and dry quickly in warm, sunny weather and it cannot be reused. On the opposite side of the spectrum is the challenge of painting in moist or damp conditions with precipitation, the advent of plein air painting predated the invention of acrylics. The traditional and well-established method of painting en plein air incorporates the use of oil paint, but enthusiasts of plein air painting were not limited to the Old World. American impressionists too, such as those of the Old Lyme school, were avid painters en plein air, american impressionist painters noted for this style during this era included Guy Rose, Robert William Wood, Mary DeNeale Morgan, John Gamble, and Arthur Hill Gilbert
33.
First inauguration of Barack Obama
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The first inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States took place on Tuesday, January 20,2009. The inauguration, which set a record attendance for any event held in Washington, D. C. marked the commencement of the first four-year term of Barack Obama as President and Joe Biden as Vice President. Based on the attendance numbers, television viewership, and Internet traffic. A New Birth of Freedom, a phrase from the Gettysburg Address, in his speeches to the crowds, Obama referred to ideals expressed by Lincoln about renewal, continuity and national unity. Obama mentioned these ideals in his speech to stress the need for shared sacrifice, for the first time, the committee opened the entire length of the National Mall as the public viewing area for the swearing-in ceremony, breaking with the tradition of past inaugurations. Among the celebrations for the inauguration, the committee hosted a first-ever Neighborhood Inaugural Ball with free or affordable tickets for ordinary citizens, in accordance with Article I, Section 6 of the United States Constitution, Obama resigned from the United States Senate effective November 16,2008. He was formally elected by the Electoral College on December 15,2008, the results were certified by a joint session of Congress on January 8,2009. Obama also represented a change as the first man elected President who was born in the 1960s. He inherited what Peter Orszag termed an economic mess that became known as the financial crisis. According to a CNN poll, he embodied youthful energy and transition at a time of economic despair, the inauguration was planned primarily by two committees, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies and the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee. Although the election was scheduled for November 4,2008, the committee began construction of the inaugural platform on September 24,2008. The committee is overseen by the U. S. Senate Committee on Rules, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies chose the inaugural theme, A New Birth of Freedom, a phrase from Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address from the Civil War era. In his reliance on the theme, Obama wanted to give Americans reassurance that today, as in Lincolns time. The congressional committee released the schedule of the January 20 inaugural events on December 17,2008. Obama decided to use his full name Barack Hussein Obama to follow the tradition, during the election campaign, Obamas detractors tried to use his middle name to imply falsely that he was a Muslim. The District of Columbia City Council passed legislation to enable bars, the co-chairs of the committee were William Daley, Penny Pritzker, John Rogers, Patrick Ryan and Julianna Smoot. The presidential committee set aside a section of the close to the U. S. Capitol for people holding reserved tickets for the inaugural event. To enable people in attendance to see and hear the swearing-in ceremony, despite criticism that such a large event could not be carbon-friendly, the presidential committee incorporated environment-friendly measures in its planning of the inaugural events
34.
Yosemite National Park
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Yosemite National Park is a national park spanning portions of Tuolumne, Mariposa and Madera counties in Northern California. The park, which is managed by the National Park Service, on average, about 4 million people visit Yosemite each year, and most spend the majority of their time in the seven square miles of Yosemite Valley. The park set a record in 2016, surpassing 5 million visitors for the first time in its history. Almost 95% of the park is designated wilderness, Yosemite was central to the development of the national park idea. First, Galen Clark and others lobbied to protect Yosemite Valley from development, Yosemite is one of the largest and least fragmented habitat blocks in the Sierra Nevada, and the park supports a diversity of plants and animals. The park has a range from 2,127 to 13,114 feet and contains five major vegetation zones, chaparral/oak woodland, lower montane forest, upper montane forest, subalpine zone. Of Californias 7,000 plant species, about 50% occur in the Sierra Nevada, there is suitable habitat for more than 160 rare plants in the park, with rare local geologic formations and unique soils characterizing the restricted ranges many of these plants occupy. The geology of the Yosemite area is characterized by granitic rocks, about 10 million years ago, the Sierra Nevada was uplifted and then tilted to form its relatively gentle western slopes and the more dramatic eastern slopes. The uplift increased the steepness of stream and river beds, resulting in formation of deep, about one million years ago, snow and ice accumulated, forming glaciers at the higher alpine meadows that moved down the river valleys. Ice thickness in Yosemite Valley may have reached 4,000 feet during the early glacial episode, the downslope movement of the ice masses cut and sculpted the U-shaped valley that attracts so many visitors to its scenic vistas today. The name Yosemite originally referred to the name of a tribe which was driven out of the area by the Mariposa Battalion. Before then the area was called Ahwahnee by indigenous people, as revealed by archeological finds, the Yosemite Valley has been inhabited for nearly 3,000 years, though humans may have first visited the area as long as 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. The indigenous natives called themselves the Ahwahneechee, meaning dwellers in Ahwahnee and they are related to the Northern Paiute and Mono tribes. Many tribes visited the area to trade, including nearby Central Sierra Miwoks, a major trading route went over Mono Pass and through Bloody Canyon to Mono Lake, just to the east of the Yosemite area. Vegetation and game in the region were similar to that present today, acorns were a staple to their diet, as well as seeds and plants, salmon. In 1851 as part of the Mariposa Wars intended to suppress Native American resistance and he was pursuing forces of around 200 Ahwahneechee led by Chief Tenaya. Accounts from this battalion were the first well-documented reports of ethnic Europeans entering Yosemite Valley, attached to Savages unit was Dr. Lafayette Bunnell, the company physician, who later wrote about his awestruck impressions of the valley in The Discovery of the Yosemite. Bunnell is credited with naming Yosemite Valley, based on his interviews with Chief Tenaya, Bunnell wrote that Chief Tenaya was the founder of the Pai-Ute Colony of Ah-wah-nee
35.
Promontory Summit
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Promontory is an area of high ground in Box Elder County, Utah,32 mi west of Brigham City and 66 mi northwest of Salt Lake City. Rising to an elevation of 4,902 feet above sea level, it lies to the north of the Promontory Mountains and it is notable as the location of Promontory Summit, where the First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was officially completed on May 10,1869. By the summer of 1868, the Central Pacific had completed the first rail route through the Sierra Nevada mountains, and was now moving down towards the Interior Plains and the Union Pacifics line. More than 4,000 workers, of two thirds were Chinese, had lain more than 100 mi of track at altitudes above 7,000 ft. In May 1869, the railheads of the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads finally met at Promontory Summit, a specially-chosen Chinese and Irish crew had taken only 12 hours to lay the final 10 miles of track in time for the ceremony. However, the date of May 8 had to be postponed for two days, because of bad weather and a labor dispute on the Union Pacific side. On May 10, in anticipation of the ceremony, Union Pacifics No.119 and Central Pacifics No.60 locomotives were drawn up face-to-face on Promontory Summit, separated only by the width of a single tie. It is unknown how many attended the event, estimates run from as low as 500 to as many as 3,000 government and railroad officials. The distinct lack of Chinese workers seen in the portrait of the occasion is said by historians to be due to racism. One account claims that it was due to timing, The more famous A. J. H, strobridges boarding car, being honored and cheered by the CPRR management. Fifty years later, three of the eight Chinese workers who brought up the last rail were guests of honor at the Promontory Summits golden anniversary celebrations in Ogden, Utah, in May 1919. The event at Promontory Summit, which was billed as the wedding of the rails, was officiated by the Reverend John Todd, three spikes were driven, one was the gold spike, one was silver, and one was a mix of gold, silver, and iron. In 1898, the spike was donated to the Stanford Museum. The last laurel tie was destroyed in fires caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Stanford University loaned the original 1869 gold spike to Cecil B. DeMille for the film Union Pacific and it was held aloft in the scene commemorating the actual event. On the West Coast, the Mossdale Bridge, which spanned the San Joaquin River near Lathrop, California, was completed in September 1869, connecting Sacramento to the network. To the East, passengers had to cross the Missouri River, in the meantime, the first uninterrupted coast-to-coast railroad was completed in August 1870 at Strasburg, Colorado, with the completion of the Denver extension of the Kansas Pacific Railway. Promontory was the site of Promontory City during and shortly after the construction of the transcontinental railroad, however, by December 1869, the shops, tents, and store fronts were being dismantled as the traders and merchants moved to other towns
36.
Central Pacific Railroad
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It is now part of the Union Pacific Railroad. Many 19th century national proposals to build a railroad failed because of the energy consumed by political disputes over slavery. With the secession of the South, the modernizers in the Republican Party controlled the US Congress and they passed legislation authorizing the railroad, with financing in the form of government railroad bonds. These were all eventually repaid with interest, the government and the railroads both shared in the increased value of the land grants, which the railroads developed. The construction of the railroad also secured for the government the economical safe and speedy transportation of the mails, troops, munitions of war, planned by Theodore Judah, the Central Pacific Railroad was authorized by Congress in 1862. It was financed and built through The Big Four, Sacramento, California businessmen Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, Crocker was in charge of construction. Construction crews comprised 12,000 Chinese emigrant workers by 1868 and they laid the first rails in 1863. The Golden spike, connecting the railroad to the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory. Coast-to-coast train travel in eight days became possible, replacing months-long sea voyages and lengthy, in 1885 the Central Pacific Railroad was leased by the Southern Pacific Company. Technically the CPRR remained an entity until 1959, when it was formally merged into Southern Pacific. The original right-of-way is now controlled by the Union Pacific, which purchased Southern Pacific in 1996, the Union Pacific-Central Pacific mainline followed the historic Overland Route from Omaha, Nebraska to San Francisco Bay. Chinese labor was the most vital source for constructing the railroad, fifty Chinese laborers were hired by the Central Pacific Railroad in February 1865, and soon more and more Chinese men were hired. Working conditions were harsh, and Chinese men were compensated less than their white counterparts, Chinese men were paid thirty-one dollars each month, and while white workers were paid the same, they were also given room and board. Construction of the road was financed primarily by 30-year, 6% U. S. government bonds authorized by Sec.5 of the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. The U. S. Government Bonds, which constituted a lien upon the railroads and all their fixtures, were repaid in full by the company as and when they became due. Sec.10 of the 1864 amending Pacific Railroad Act additionally authorized the company to issue its own First Mortgage Bonds in total amounts up to that of the bonds issued by the United States, such company-issued securities had priority over the original Government Bonds. Sec.3 of the 1862 Act granted the railroads 10 square miles of land for every mile laid, except where railroads ran through cities. This grant was apportioned in 5 sections on alternating sides of the railroad and these grants were later doubled to 20 square miles per mile of grade by the 1864 Act
37.
Union Pacific Railroad
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The Union Pacific Railroad is a freight hauling railroad that operates 8,500 locomotives over 32,100 route-miles in 23 states west of Chicago, Illinois and New Orleans, Louisiana. The Union Pacific Railroad network is the largest in the United States and it is also one of the worlds largest transportation companies. Union Pacific Railroad is the operating company of Union Pacific Corporation. Union Pacific Corporations main competitor is the BNSF Railway, the second largest freight railroad. Together, the two railroads have a duopoly on all freight rail lines in the U. S. The original company was incorporated on July 1,1862, under an act of Congress entitled Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. The act was approved by President Abraham Lincoln, and it provided for the construction of railroads from the Missouri River to the Pacific as a war measure for the preservation of the Union. It was constructed westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa to meet the Central Pacific Railroad line, the line was constructed primarily by Irish labor who had learned their craft during the recent Civil War. The two lines were joined together at Promontory Summit, Utah,53 miles west of Ogden on May 10,1869, hence creating the first transcontinental railroad in North America. Under the guidance of its dominant stockholder Dr. Thomas Clark Durant, the namesake of the city of Durant, Iowa, the first rails were laid in Omaha. It built or purchased local lines that gave it access to Denver, Colorado, to Portland, Oregon and it also owned narrow gauge trackage into the heart of the Colorado Rockies and a standard gauge line south from Denver across New Mexico into Texas. UP was entangled in the Crédit Mobilier scandal, exposed in 1872 and its independent construction company the Crédit Mobilier had bribed congressmen. The UP itself was not guilty but it did get bad publicity, the financial crisis of 1873 led to financial troubles but not bankruptcy. The company was reorganized as the Union Pacific Railway on January 24,1880, the new company declared bankruptcy during the Panic of 1893. When it emerged in 1897 it reverted to the original name, the corporate headquarters of the Union Pacific Corporation were located in New York City from its initial founding in the 1860s until Drew Lewis became CEO in the mid-1980s. He relocated it to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, later the headquarters was shifted to Dallas, Texas, before relocating to Omaha to join the operating headquarters. From the ICC annual reports, except 1979 is from Moodys, on December 31,1925 UP-OSL-OWRN-LA&SL-StJ&GI operated 9,834 route-miles and 15,265 track-miles. At the end of 1980, Union Pacific operated 9,266 route-miles and 15,647 miles of track, Moodys shows 220,697 million revenue ton-miles in 1993 on the expanded system
38.
First Transcontinental Railroad
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The rail line was built by three private companies over public lands provided by extensive US land grants. Construction was financed by state and US government subsidy bonds as well as by company issued mortgage bonds. The Western Pacific Railroad Company built 132 mi of track from Oakland/Alameda to Sacramento, the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California constructed 690 mi eastward from Sacramento to Promontory Summit, Utah Territory. And the Union Pacific built 1,085 mi from the eastern terminus at Council Bluffs near Omaha. The railroad opened for traffic on May 10,1869 when CPRR President Leland Stanford ceremonially drove the gold Last Spike with a silver hammer at Promontory Summit. The coast-to-coast railroad connection revolutionized the settlement and economy of the American West and it brought the western states and territories into alignment with the northern Union states and made transporting passengers and goods coast-to-coast considerably quicker and less expensive. Paddle steamers linked Sacramento to the cities and their facilities in the San Francisco Bay until 1869. The roads rail terminus was moved two months later to the Oakland Long Wharf about a mile to the north, Service between San Francisco and Oakland Pier continued to be provided by ferry. The CPRR eventually purchased 53 miles of UPRR-built grade from Promontory Summit to Ogden, the transcontinental line was popularly known as the Overland Route after the principal passenger rail service that operated over the length of the line until 1962. In 1847 he submitted to the U. S. Congress a Proposal for a Charter to Build a Railroad from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean, Congress agreed to support the idea. Under the direction of the Department of War, the Pacific Railroad Surveys were conducted from 1853 through 1855 and these included an extensive series of expeditions of the American West seeking possible routes. A report on the explorations described alternative routes and included an amount of information about the American West. It included the natural history and illustrations of reptiles, amphibians, birds. The report failed however to include detailed maps of potential routes needed to estimate the feasibility, cost. This in part motivated the United States to complete the Gadsden Purchase, the U. S. Congress was strongly divided on where the eastern terminus of the railroad should be—in a southern or northern city. Three routes were considered, A northern route roughly along the Missouri River through present-day northern Montana to Oregon Territory and this was considered impractical due to the rough terrain and extensive winter snows. A central route following the Platte River in Nebraska through to the South Pass in Wyoming, following most of the Oregon Trail, snow on this route remained a concern. A southern route across Texas, New Mexico Territory, the Sonora desert, connecting to Los Angeles, surveyors found during a 1848 survey that the best route lay south of the border between the United States and Mexico
39.
California State Railroad Museum
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The California State Railroad Museum is a museum in the state park system of California, USA, interpreting the role of the iron horse in connecting California to the rest of the nation. It is located in Old Sacramento at 111 I Street, the museum features 21 restored locomotives and railroad cars, some dating back to 1862. The Sierra Scene shows a large mockup of a construction scene high in the Sierra Nevada representing Donner Pass circa 1867. Changing exhibits featuring photography, ephemera, and artifacts from the collection, add depth. The roundhouse area of the features a rotating display of locomotives. When not on display, these items are stored and worked on at the nearby Sacramento Railyards in the buildings that were part of the original Southern Pacific Shop complex. In early 2011, the interior remained closed to public use, the Sacramento Southern Railroad owns the Walnut Grove Branch right-of-way that extends south from Sacramento along the eastern bank of the Sacramento River. A few miles of track were rebuilt along the levee near Freeport, the CSRRM hopes to one day have a longer excursion line, perhaps as far as Hood, California. At that location the railroad passengers could disembark the train and take a tourist steamboat back up the Sacramento River to Old Sacramento. The museum has its origins in 1937, when a group of enthusiasts in the San Francisco Bay Area formed the Pacific Coast Chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. The Museums first facility, the Central Pacific Railroad Passenger Station, the Railroad History Museum was completed in 1981. Steam-powered passenger train service on the Sacramento Southern Railroad began in 1984, railtown 1897 State Historic Park in Jamestown was added to the Museum complex during 1992. Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe 2925 - Stored, a 4-8-4 type built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1944, atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe 5021 - Stored, a 2-10-4 type built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1944. Central Pacific No.1 Gov. Stanford - Cosmetically restored, granite Rock No.10 ) a USATC S100 Class 0-6-0T built by Porter in *1942. Northwestern Pacific 112 - Stored, a 4-6-0 type built by ALCO in 1908, north Pacific Coast 12 Sonoma - Cosmetically restored, a 3 ft narrow gauge 4-4-0 type built by Baldwin in 1875. Sole surviving NPC locomotive, and one of three surviving Baldwin 8/18C class 3 ft narrow gauge 4-4-0s. Central Pacific No.3 / Southern Pacific No.1 C. P. Huntington - Cosmetically restored, Central Pacific No.233 - Stored, awaiting restoration. A 2-6-2 tank engine built by Central Pacifics Sacramento Shops in 1882, donated 2001 by the Pacific Locomotive Association
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Sacramento, California
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Sacramento is the capital city of the U. S. state of California and the seat of Sacramento County. It is at the confluence of the Sacramento River and the American River in the portion of Californias expansive Central Valley. Its estimated 2014 population of 485,199 made it the sixth-largest city in California, Sacramento is the cultural and economic core of the Sacramento metropolitan area, which includes seven counties with a 2010 population of 2,414,783. In 2002, the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University conducted for Time magazine named Sacramento Americas Most Diverse City, Sacramento became a city through the efforts of the Swiss immigrant John Sutter, Sr. his son John Augustus Sutter, Jr. and James W. Marshall. Sacramento grew quickly thanks to the protection of Sutters Fort, which was established by Sutter in 1839, the city was named after the Sacramento River, which forms its western border. The river was named by Spanish cavalry officer Gabriel Moraga for the Santísimo Sacramento, California State University, Sacramento, is the largest university in the city and one of 23 campuses in the California State University system. University of the Pacific is a university with one of its three campuses in Sacramento. In addition, the University of California, Davis, located in nearby Davis, operates its UC Davis Medical Center, nisenan and Plains Miwok Native Americans had lived in the area for perhaps thousands of years. Unlike the settlers who would eventually make Sacramento their home, these Native Americans left little evidence of their existence. Traditionally, their diet was dominated by acorns taken from the oak trees in the region, and by fruits, bulbs, seeds. In 1808, the Spanish explorer Gabriel Moraga discovered and named the Sacramento Valley, a Spanish writer with the Moraga expedition wrote, Canopies of oaks and cottonwoods, many festooned with grapevines, overhung both sides of the blue current. Birds chattered in the trees and big fish darted through the pellucid depths, the air was like champagne, and drank deep of it, drank in the beauty around them. The valley and the river were then christened after the Most Holy Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, John Sutter first arrived on August 13,1839 at the divergence of the American and Sacramento Rivers with a Mexican land grant of 50,000 acres. The next year, he and his party established Sutters Fort, representing Mexico, Sutter called his colony New Helvetia, a Swiss inspired name, and was the political authority and dispenser of justice in the new settlement. Soon, the colony began to grow as more and more pioneers headed west, within just a few short years, John Sutter had become a grand success, owning a ten-acre orchard and a herd of thirteen thousand cattle. Fort Sutter became a stop for the increasing number of immigrants coming through the valley. In 1847, Sutter hired James Marshall to build a sawmill so that he could continue to expand his empire, Sutter received 2,000 fruit trees in 1847, which started the agriculture industry in the Sacramento Valley. In 1848, when gold was discovered by James W. Marshall at Sutters Mill in Coloma and he hired topographical engineer William H
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El Capitan
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El Capitan is a vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park, located on the north side of Yosemite Valley, near its western end. The granite monolith extends about 3,000 feet from base to summit along its tallest face and is one of the worlds favorite challenges for rock climbers, the formation was named El Capitan by the Mariposa Battalion when they explored the valley in 1851. El Capitan was taken to be a loose Spanish translation of the local Native American name for the cliff and it is unclear if the Native American name referred to a specific tribal chief or simply meant the chief or rock chief. In modern times, the name is often contracted to El Cap, especially among rock climbers. The top of El Capitan can be reached by hiking out of Yosemite Valley on the next to Yosemite Falls. For climbers, the challenge is to climb up the granite face. There are many named climbing routes, all of them arduous, including Iron Hawk and Sea of Dreams, El Capitan is composed almost entirely of granite, a pale, coarse-grained granite emplaced approximately 100 mya. In addition to El Capitan, this granite forms most of the features of the western portions of Yosemite Valley. A separate intrusion of igneous rock, the Taft Granite, forms the uppermost portions of the cliff face, a third igneous rock, diorite, is present as dark-veined intrusions through both kinds of granite, especially prominent in the area known as the North America Wall. Along with most of the rock formations of Yosemite Valley. The El Capitan Granite is relatively free of joints, and as a result the ice did not erode the rock face as much as other, more jointed. These forces contribute to the creation of such as the Texas Flake. Once considered impossible to climb, El Capitan is now the standard for big-wall climbing, El Cap has two main faces, the Southwest and the Southeast. Between the two faces juts a prow, while today there are numerous established routes on both faces, the most popular and historically famous route is The Nose, which follows the south buttress. The climbing team relied heavily on aid climbing, using rope, pitons, the second ascent of The Nose was in 1960 by Royal Robbins, Joe Fitschen, Chuck Pratt and Tom Frost, who took seven days in the first continuous climb of the route without siege tactics. The first solo climb of The Nose was done by Tom Bauman in 1969, the first ascent of The Nose in one day was accomplished in 1975 by John Long, Jim Bridwell and Billy Westbay. Today, The Nose typically takes fit climbers 4–5 days of full climbing, efforts during the 1960s and 1970s explored the other faces of El Capitan, and many of the early routes are still popular today. Among the early classics are Salathé Wall on the southwest face, also climbed in the 1960s are routes such as, Dihedral Wall, West Buttress, and Muir Wall
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Oakland Museum of California
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The Oakland Museum of California or OMCA is an interdisciplinary museum dedicated to the art, history, and natural science of California, located in Oakland, California. The museum contains more than 1.8 million objects dedicated to telling the story of California. It was created in the out of the merger of three separate museums dating from the early 20th century, and was opened in 1969. Outdoor architectural features are terraced gardens, patios, outdoor sculpture, a large lawn area. Between 2009 and 2013, the museum underwent a renovation and expansion designed by Mark Cavagnero Associates. The art and history galleries were closed from August 2009 to May 2010, followed by closure of the science gallery. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill designed the graphics program for the renovation. Core support for the improvements came from Measure G, a $23.6 million bond initiative passed by Oakland voters in 2002. The museum owns more than 70,000 examples of California art and design, painters represented in the art collection include Addie L. The museum holds the archives of Dorothea Lange and images by many other noted photographers. More than 1.8 million items represent Californias history and cultures from the era before Europeans arrived, the collection of the Natural Sciences Department showcases California as a biodiversity hotspot and as the state containing the greatest biological diversity in the nation. The Oakland Public Museum opened in the nearby Camron-Stanford House in 1910 and its first curator, Charles P. Wilcomb, gathered a collection representing two aspects of California cultural history, Native Americans and settlers from the East Coast. The Oakland Art Gallery opened in the Oakland Municipal Auditorium in 1916, originally under the auspices of the Oakland Public Museum, whose director at the time, the Snow Museum of Natural History opened in the Cutting mansion, also on the shore of Lake Merritt, in 1922. Although the merged Oakland Museum focuses on California art, history and nature, some pieces from outside the state remain, such as a collection of snuff bottles. Official Oakland Museum of California website Great Buildings website - exterior and interior views
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Blanton Museum of Art
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The museum was founded in 1963 as the University Art Museum on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. The University Art Museum was initially housed in the Art Department of the University of Texas and was founded through the proceeds from the sale of donated by Archer M. Huntington. This land was donated with the stipulation that it be used to support an art museum at the University, in 1964, Donald Goodall became the Museum’s first director. By 1972, a portion of the Museum’s collection was housed at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center, while the print study room, in 1979, Eric S. McCready became the Museum’s second director, and the museum was renamed the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery shortly thereafter. In 1993, Jessie Otto Hite became the third director. The campaign to build a new building began in 1997 with a $12 million gift from the Houston Endowment, Inc. in honor of its then-chairman, the museum was renamed the Blanton Museum of Art, with construction on the new building commencing in 2003. Although the Museum was built as designed by Kallmann McKinnell & Wood Architects, lawrence Speck, disappointed in the series of events that led to Herzog & de Meurons resignation, resigned as dean of the School of Architecture, although he remains a faculty member. The new gallery building, named the Mari and James A. Michener Gallery Building, a second education and administration building, totaling 56,000 square feet, opened in 2008. In 2009, Ned Rifkin was named to replace the retiring Jessie Otto Hite as director, in 2011, Simone Wicha was named director. The Blantons permanent collection of almost 18,000 works is recognized for its European paintings, prints and drawings, the collection also includes works by lesser-known, but still historically significant, painters such as Daniele Crespi and Luca Cambiaso. The Blanton owns a collection of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman vases, many came from the Castle Ashby Collection formed by the Spencer Compton, 2nd Marquess of Northampton, who funded numerous excavations at Vulci, an Etruscan town north of Rome, during the 1820s. The Blanton’s modern and contemporary art holdings comprise more than 4,000 objects, novelist James Michener, and his wife, Mari Michener, began giving their collection of 20th-century American paintings to the Blanton in the 1960s. The gift spanned into the early 1990s and eventually totaled more than 300 works, the Micheners also gave acquisition funds to the museum, supporting the purchase of approximately 75 additional paintings. The museums collection includes 20th-century artists such as Thomas Hart Benton, Alice Neel, in 2009, Stacked Waters, an installation by artist Teresita Fernández commissioned by Jeanne and Michael Klein, debuted in the Rapoport Atrium of the Blanton Museum. In 2014, the Blanton acquired an important group of drawings, prints, susan G. and Edmund W. Gordon. The Latin American collection expanded significantly in the 1970s and 1980s with gifts from collector Barbara Duncan of 277 works of art, the museum was the first institution in the United States to create a curatorial position for Latin American art in 1988. The founding curator of the department was Mari Carmen Ramírez who acquired one of the works in the Latin American collection, Cildo Meireles’ Missão/Missões. The Museum received an addition of Latin American modern and midcentury Latin American art from collectors Judy
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Austin, Texas
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Austin is the capital of the U. S. state of Texas and the seat of Travis County. It is the 11th-most populous city in the U. S. and it is the fastest growing large city in the United States and the second most populous capital city after Phoenix, Arizona. As of the U. S. Census Bureaus July 1,2015 estimate and it is the cultural and economic center of the Austin–Round Rock metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 2,056,405 as of July 1,2016. In the 1830s, pioneers began to settle the area in central Austin along the Colorado River, in 1839, the site was officially chosen to replace Houston as the new capital of the Republic of Texas and was incorporated under the name Waterloo. Shortly thereafter, the name was changed to Austin in honor of Stephen F. Austin, the Father of Texas and the republics first secretary of state. The city subsequently grew throughout the 19th century and became a center for government and education with the construction of the Texas State Capitol and the University of Texas at Austin. After a lull in growth from the Great Depression, Austin resumed its development into a city and, by the 1980s, it emerged as a center for technology. A number of Fortune 500 companies have headquarters or regional offices in Austin, including Amazon. com, cisco, eBay, Google, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Texas Instruments, 3M, and Whole Foods Market. Dells worldwide headquarters is located in nearby Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, residents of Austin are known as Austinites. They include a mix of government employees, college students, musicians, high-tech workers, blue-collar workers. The city also adopted Silicon Hills as a nickname in the 1990s due to an influx of technology. In the late 1800s, Austin was known as the City of the Violet Crown because of the glow of light across the hills just after sunset. Even today, many Austin businesses use the term Violet Crown in their name, Austin is known as a clean-air city for its stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars. The FBI ranked Austin as the second-safest major city in the U. S. for the year 2012, U. S. News & World Report named Austin the best place to live in the U. S. in 2017. Austin, Travis County and Williamson County have been the site of habitation since at least 9200 BC. When settlers arrived from Europe, the Tonkawa tribe inhabited the area, the Comanches and Lipan Apaches were also known to travel through the area. Spanish colonists, including the Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre expedition, traveled through the area for centuries, in 1730, three missions from East Texas were combined and reestablished as one mission on the south side of the Colorado River, in what is now Zilker Park, in Austin. The mission was in area for only about seven months
45.
Anchorage Museum
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The Anchorage Museum is a large art, history, ethnography, ecology and science museum located in a modern building in the heart of Anchorage, Alaska. It is dedicated to studying and exploring the land, peoples, art, the museum displays material from its permanent collection, along with regular visiting exhibitions. The museum opened in 1968 in a 10, 000-square-foot building with an exhibition of 60 borrowed Alaska paintings, a collection of 2500 historic and ethnographic objects, first accredited in 1973, the museum has maintained its accreditation since. In 1992, the became the home for the Alaska office of the Smithsonians NMNH Arctic Studies Center, which supports the museums mission through research, education. The Anchorage Museum is a museum located in the heart of Alaskas largest city. It welcomes over 180,000 annual visitors from Alaska and from around the world, the museum is repeatedly ranked among Alaskas top ten visitor attractions. Each year it presents 16–20 changing exhibitions complemented by education programs, in 2006,20,993 students and 47,836 adults participated in education programs. The museums library/archives are in frequent demand by publishers, scholars, titles held in the Library are accessible to students, scholars and the public via interlibrary loan on the web. The Smithsonian Institutions Arctic Studies Center conducts public programs and collaborative programs to increase understanding of northern peoples, cultures. It develops exhibitions and offers professional museum training workshops frequented by museum, the museum serves its statewide mission by organizing and presenting programs and exhibitions in Anchorage, as well as by traveling exhibitions throughout the state. Examples include exhibits shared with museums in Unalaska, Bethel, Homer, Ketchikan, Kenai, Fairbanks, Kodiak, Eek, the museum provides professional recommendations on collections, exhibitions, education, archival organization and conservation to other Alaska museums, cultural centers and the public. The Anchorage Museum has over 40,000 square feet devoted to its permanent collection with a focus on Alaska history, Art of the North and this gallery is devoted to Alaskas rich history from the native fauna through the time of the first early migrations to the present. The Alaska Gallery exhibits more than 1,000 objects and is one of the most complete presentations of Alaskan history and ethnology. Full-scale and miniature dioramas give insight into the lifestyles of Alaskas Native peoples, exploration and settlement by the Russians, the permanent art collection represents the vast range of art from Alaska and the circumpolar North. Seven galleries on the ground floor are devoted to this collection. Exhibitions include juried shows, interpretive exhibitions and traveling exhibitions from other museums, the museum provides a substantial range of exhibits and programs that acquaint Alaskans with the art, culture, history and science of other peoples and places. The museum also seeks to ensure that its Alaska-focused programming and exhibitions represent the diversity of immigrant heritages in Alaska, public programs include lectures, classes, workshops, films, public and school tours, and special events. The museum is operated by the Anchorage Museum Association, a private non-profit organization under a long contract with the Municipality of Anchorage
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Davidson Glacier
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The Davidson Glacier is a large valley glacier near Haines, Alaska that finds its source in the Chilkat Range. The Davidson Glacier was originally discovered by 1867 and was recounted by John Muir in his famous travels in, the glacier was, at that time, a glacier that nearly reached tidewater. It has since receded into the mountains and created its very own glacial lake in the moraine about one mile inland from the Chilkat Inlet. Currently, the Davidson Glacier serves as a tourist attraction for Haines, list of glaciers U. S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System, Davidson Glacier
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Early California artists
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Early California Artists are a subset of American Western artists, painting in the mid-to-late 19th century. Their styles varied from realistic representation to the imagined, the Early California artists helped shape and create California in culture and politics. Some were members of early survey expeditions of the West, such as Thomas Ayres and their scenic paintings moved U. S. leaders in Washington, D. C. including President Abraham Lincoln. Their legacy includes the National Park Service that formed for conservation, President Abraham Lincoln began the system on June 30,1864 upon signing The Yosemite Grant, giving California a state park for public use, resort and recreation. Populist art of Yosemite helped create and save Yosemite from many attempts at development, celebration of Nature Journalists, Painters and Musicians, formed the Bohemian Club in 1872, and then recruited powerful businessmen and entrepreneurs. They also started the Advocacy group Sierra Club in 1892, but John Muir and his artist friends were not able to save Hetch Hetchy Valley, which Muir felt was more stunning than Yosemite. This frontier was seen through the eyes of an artist by the average easterner. And the few easterners that had seen it, took back paintings and prose of its breathtaking beauties to evangelize their family and friends on the beauties of the unspoiled west. The artists were considered to advertise the Wonders of Nature, in a way caused a groundswell of public opinion to protect the most visually stunning areas like Yosemite from development. Thomas Ayres Albert Bierstadt John Englehart Thomas Hill George Inness William Keith Victor Matson Thomas Moran Examples of early Californian art can be seen at the following museums. Oakland Museum of California Crocker Art Museum The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens Society of California Pioneers Museum Stanford University Museum of Art
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