A fancy flight of lyrics specifies that Santa Catalina Island is "26 miles across the sea." But mapmakers put the distance at 19.7 miles from the closest island point, Doctor's Cove (near Arrow Point)
The Strategic Air Command equipped the 4136th Strategic Wing at Minot Air Force Base with B-52Hs in 1961. The first landing of the first B-52H was part of a celebration on the base referred to as "Pea
Route 66 is the "Main Street of America," heralded in song and popular culture. It took a maze of different routes through St. Louis before slashing diagonally across the "Show-Me State" through the b
The Willow Run Bomber Plant opened in 1941 and produced over 8,600 B-24 Liberator bombers, a key element of the Allied arsenal in World War II. In 1981, a group of aviation enthusiasts established the
With financial help from his father, Peter Joseph Schroeder, Peter Schroeder opened a small dry goods business in 1891 at the southeast corner of Eighteenth and Washington Streets in the B. Mayer Buil
The Thomas B. Jeffery Company existed as an automobile maker from 1902 to 1916 and in that short span created a corporate foundation that would lead to successor firms Nash Motors, Nash-Kelvinator, Am
In the early 1920s, Waterloo businessman Henry B. Allen donated $200,000 and 80 acres of land to the Allen Memorial Hospital Association to establish a hospital in memory of Mary, his wife. The hospit
Over the past 75 years, gays and lesbians have experienced tremendous social change in America. Gay and lesbian culture, once considered a twilight world that could not be spoken of in daylight, has b
Mount Rainier began its history as an incorporated town in1910, with the merging of several subdivisions that straddledBunker Hill Road, a major route between the ports of Georgetownand Bladensburg. B
In the New Jersey shore community of Sea Girt, where Commodore Robert Stockton's oceanfront mansion had a porch as long as a ship's deck from which he surveyed the waters, a lighthouse was built in 18
Born from opportunity and a promotional scheme hatched by founding father Charles B. Eddy, Carlsbad started life as a tent city on a desolate landscape. As the investment money started to flow, the Pe
The Los Angeles River was tamed years ago. The river, by nature wanting to be violent and random, doses now in a concrete bed through downtown Los Angeles. In the city's core, there are over a dozen b
In 1921, a chance encounter with a radio receiver sent Sacramento Bee newspaperman Carlos McClatchy on a determined path to break into broadcasting. Ushered by the enterprising McClatchy family, the B
Magnificent Pikes Peak rises dramatically from the Colorado prairie to a height of 14,114 feet above sea level. Visible for one hundred miles around, the granite giant's magnetic appeal compelled rugg
The Grand Strand has a long tradition of hardworking independence and the enthusiastic pursuit of leisure activities. Myrtle Beach is known as a hotbed of hearty partiers, and its chronicles include b
A passion for education, opposition to slavery, and yearning for a moral life led Josiah B. Grinnell and his band of like-minded New Englanders to establish a town and a college on the Iowa prairie in
A place whose history has long been a source of fable and fascination, Carmel-by-the-Sea is a community whose ancestors summered by the sea and ultimately stayed through the seasons. After founders Fr
In 1949, two bandits from Youngstown, Ohio, boarded a B&O passenger train from Washington, D.C., to Detroit. In the West Virginia mountains near Martinsburg, Luman "Lu" Ramsd
Prior to the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) in 1934, the small community of Elkmont was established as a logging camp by Col. Wilson B. Townsend's Little River Lumber Com
Before Edmonds became a town, it was a forest of cedar trees and evergreens. The Puget Sound's various Indian tribes used the land for camping, the sea for fishing and clamming for meals, and the mars
In November 1887, the Kansas City, Memphis & Birmingham Railroad (KCM&B)--later the St. Louis-San Francisco Railroad, or "Frisco"--established a new town as a halfway point on its route betwee
Images of America: Kentucky's Horse-Drawn Era takes a look at the days when animals--mostly horses and mules--supplied the "horsepower" for daily life in Kentucky. The animals' work included hauling b
The island eventually known as Sea Isle was first purchased by Joseph Ludlam in 1692 for use as a grazing pasture. The island changed almost overnight when Charles K. Landis purchased it in 1880, inte
The Mayflower Park Hotel started life as the Bergonian Hotel on July 16, 1927. One of Seattle's first uptown hotels, it was designed by architect B. Dudley Stuart and built by Stephen Berg at a cost o
Incorporated in 1827, the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) was one of America's first railroads, and Maryland was its heart and soul. The B&O's creation was a tangible symbol of the Industr
Saginaw's river system was important to settlement in the area. The Shiawassee, Tittabawassee, and Saginaw Rivers converge at a place called Green Point. It was here that Native Americans lived long b
By the time residents of Carthage celebrated the city's centennial in 1942, the city had grown to a population of approximately 12,000 and sat at the intersection of two national highways nicknamed "B
In 1902, magazine publisher Edward Gardner Lewis needed greater space for his thriving business, then based in downtown St. Louis. He headed west, out Delmar Boulevard a mile past the city line, and b
The history of Port Jefferson, a village on Long Island's North Shore, is rich with the lore of ships and the sea. Once called Drowned Meadow because of flooding at high tide, the town was renamed Por
The town of Langley, tagged "Village by the Sea," is perched on a low bluff near the southern end of Whidbey Island in Puget Sound. Town founder Jacob Anthes first purchased land here at age 15, helpe
In 1906, entrepreneur and New York railroad builder William B. Strang Jr. started a unique suburban housing development seven miles southwest of Kansas City that he named Overland Park. He chose farml
In 1886, Confederate veteran Burgess Griffin Royse platted his namesake townsite on the blackland prairie of North Texas. A savvy businessman, Royse knew that the Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad line b
One of the first automobile suburbs in Austin, Pemberton Heights was developed from former plantation land on a limestone bluff overlooking the city. Neighborhood development began in 1927 with a cast
Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a bank holiday on March 5, 1933, closing banks across the country until they proved financial soundness. Meanwhile, as the United States crawled out of the Great D
On June 30, 1907, Robert McCollum, Jerome Kuhn, and two other men rode in a horse-drawn wagon up the Blue Lakes Grade from Ira B. Perrine's Snake River Canyon ranch. Looking for the ideal spot to form
Cordova is built upon a rich foundation of bounties from both the sea and the land; add to that the traditions of many cultures of people and the result is a novel Alaskan community. Natives lived nea
From a primitive French fort visited by George Washington on his first government assignment to the birthplace of Gen. Strong Vincent, one of Gettysburg's most notable heroes, Waterford has always had
Oceana County, named for the great freshwater ocean of Lake Michigan, was formed in 1831 and organized on February 13, 1855. The great forest seemed to be an ocean itself, a never-ending sea of green
Auto Zone Park, arguably the best minor-league baseball park built in the past 25 years, is nestled in a corner of downtown Memphis. Located across the street from the historic Peabody Hotel and two b
The area of what is now the city of Markesan had its humble beginnings as early as 1844, when John B. Seward erected the first homestead in what would become a thriving community. In 1849, the area wa
