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Category: Drawings

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Pictures to Go: Viewing Trains as Metaphors

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The following is a guest post by Martha H. Kennedy, Curator of Popular & Applied Graphic Arts, Prints and Photographs Division. Travel by train, or what some called the “Iron horse,” dominated other forms of transport in America for nearly fifty years. During this “golden age” of railroads that began in 1865, public fascination with …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

The Rush for Gold

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

The January 1848 chance discovery of gold in northern California rapidly altered the course of America. On this day, August 19, in 1848, word finally reached the East Coast, when the New York Herald published a report of the discovery. By 1849, the rush was on in earnest, leading to the well-known term for gold …