Drastic climatic change via drought conditions was a major factor prompting residents of the Great Plains, many of them farmers, westward to California in one of the largest migrations in U.S. history.
This post is about maps related to the voyages of Sir Francis Drake in the collections of the Library of Congress. The maps are held in both the Geography and Map Division and the Hans Peter Kraus Collection of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division.
High above the coastal town of Lynn, Massachusetts sits High Rock. Today, High Rock is a city park, but its history ties back to the Hutchinson Family Singers and the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement in the United States.
The Seaboard Air Line Railway (SAL) was a prominent passenger and freight railway in the south in the late 19th and beginning 20th centuries. Headquartered in Portsmouth, VA, the rail line’s primary backbone connected southern states starting in Virginia and southward to the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. Started in 1832 with its earliest predecessor, …
An 1898 map allows for a close examination of the natural and political geography of colonization during the "Scramble for Africa" and the never-completed Cape to Cairo Railway.
1960 was a dramatic year for Africa, in which 17 countries gained their independence from colonial powers. This post charts the events of that watershed year through a series of political maps produced by the CIA.