Clik here to view.
Greening the Chicago River
With bagpipes wailing Irish tunes and green-clad celebrants watching from the banks of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, Mike Butler’s two-boat crew slams over the choppy waves, scattering a fine...
View ArticleClik here to view.
East Maui Taro Festival
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! The sounds of stone striking wood echo through the still, steamy air in Hana, Hawaii (pop. 709), drawing a crowd of curious onlookers as Nameaea Hoshino, 26, demonstrates an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Crazy ’bout Crawfish
Standing in his flat-bottom boat, Pete Berard pulls a wire-mesh trap from a 10-acre pond a few miles southeast of Breaux Bridge, La. (pop. 7,281), and shakes a dozen lively crawfish into a nylon sack....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sudbury, Mass., Reflects Patriotic ZIP
In the gray light before dawn, a horseman wearing Colonial attire gallops into Sudbury, Mass. (pop. 16,841), bringing an urgent message to the people of the quiet New England village. Panting from his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Monarch Butterfly Migration
Julia Holder, 9, tries not to move a muscle as a monarch butterfly, newly emerged from its caterpillar cocoon, clings to the tip of her nose and tests its untried wings. A puff of air encourages a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mining the Gem Capital of the World
Rebecca Scheidt, 30, dumps a bucketful of creek gravel into a screened tray at the Cherokee Ruby and Sapphire Mine in Franklin, N.C. (pop. 3,490), and dips the loaded tray into a stream of water...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wagon Trains Recreate Pioneer History
Sitting tall on the seat of an 1850s freight wagon, Rick Newborn keeps an eye on Frosty and Odie and his six other draft horses as they plod toward 7,380-foot Echo Summit in the Sierra Nevada near...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Horseradish Capital of the World
Sweltering beneath the blazing sun, David Willaredt, 26, and five farm hands walk gradually across an 8-acre field north of Collinsville, Ill., hoeing weeds between rows of horseradish, a crop that...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Indy 500 at 100
Ray Harroun, 32, needed help climbing from his 6-cylinder Marmon Wasp in 1911 before the weary driver spit out a mouthful of dust and slumped against the racecar in sheer exhaustion. The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brass Band Festival Rings Through Danville, Ky.
“One, two, one, two, three, four,” counts pianist Dick Domek, 64, kicking off “Ain’t She Sweet” as the Walnut Street Ragtime Ramblers launch into the 1927 hit song during last year’s Great American...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Bookcase for Every Child
Hugging her stuffed lamb, Nija Graves, 5, picks one of her favorite books, Rain, Rain, from a handcrafted oak bookcase personalized with her name, then tells her mother that she’s ready to read. “We...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Operation Playground
Using his index finger, 10-year-old Jermon Palmer slowly traces a path across his pencil-and-crayon design of a “perfect” playground—starting with a green light at the gate telling children it’s OK to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Missouri Fox Trotter
Sally Scott, 76, sits astride her chestnut-colored mare, nudging her forward until the horse shifts into a nimble fox trot inside of a competition arena in Ava, Mo. (pop. 2,993). Head bobbing and tail...
View ArticleClik here to view.
St. Paul’s Chapel Offers Hope, Healing at Ground Zero
Across the street from the site of the fallen World Trade Center, Carlos Lopez lingers at a Sept. 11 exhibit inside of St. Paul’s Chapel, where he and thousands of other workers found refuge after the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Latrobe High School Students Collect Priceless Paintings
Walking along a hallway lined with paintings by professional artists, guide Amanda Seanor reminds members of her tour group that they are in neither an art gallery nor a museum. “It’s definitely not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Where the West was Filmed
Legendary Hollywood stuntman Loren Janes, 79, stands atop a steep hillside in California’s Alabama Hills, recalling how he tumbled down the boulder-strewn granite landscape inside of a Conestoga wagon...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Westerns Filmed in Lone Pine, California
Scenes from 15 of more than 400 Westerns filmed in the Lone Pine hills from the 1920s to the 1950s
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ozark Ball Museum
People may think they're goofballs, but Kelly Mulhollan, 52, and Donna Stjerna, 57, are having a ball with his collection in Fayetteville, Ark. (pop. 58,047). The traveling musicians opened the Ozark...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Halloween Frolic
Isaac Wingert, 10, switches on the lights of the John Deere tractor costume that he built from a cardboard box for the Halloween Frolic parade in Hiawatha, Kan. (pop. 3,417), as he awaits pre-parade...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Easton, Maryland, Waterfowl Festival
Dabbing her brush in brown and blue watercolor paints, Phyllis Dixon captures on paper her childhood memories of autumns near Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay, where “migrating birds seemed to take over the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Celebrating ‘Hoosiers’
Basketball sneakers squeak and a ball thumps on the hardwood floor as players race to the hoop in the historic Hoosier Gym-where the 1986 movie Hoosiers was filmed-in Knightstown, Ind. (pop. 2,182)....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Collecting Antique Washing Machines
The only time that Lee Maxwell attempted to wash his family's laundry, the white clothes came out of the machine looking pink, according to his wife, Barbara. Even so, Maxwell, 81, knows as much about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Singing Handel’s ‘Messiah’ for 65 Years
Just as she has done every Thanksgiving weekend since the end of World War II, Elsie Lundvall stands on the front row of the alto section, raises her musical score and joins 140 voices to sing the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
American Profile Chestnut Sweepstakes
For nearly 30 years, The American Chestnut Foundation has worked to develop a blight-resistant American chestnut tree and restore the species to the eastern woodlands of the United States. Learn more...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Christmas Mountain U.S.A.
Steve Borbas, 66, stands in the dark on Tenderfoot Mountain, waiting to light up a Christmas tradition that he and other volunteers have prepared for weeks and maintained for decades in Salida, Colo....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Flinging Fruitcake
Wearing military-style fatigues and an aviator cap, Jerry Pokorny, 64, stuffs a frozen fruitcake into a long, slim tube attached to an exercise bike. He checks printed satellite maps, twists the valve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Georgia Town Celebrates Pine Trees
ike Cowart, 49, breathes in the aroma of evergreens as he positions the claw of a 28,000-pound timber-harvesting machine around the trunk of a 100-foot-tall longleaf pine tree, using the equipment to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
America’s National Historic Trails
When she was 4, Faye Gaines walked barefoot across the wagon ruts between her home and her grandmother’s house near Springer, N.M. (pop. 1,047). Even then, she felt a sense of history as she followed...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Texas Town Honors Sam Houston
Sam Houston, the Father of Texas Independence, casts a long shadow over the Lone Star State, but nowhere does his legacy loom larger than in Huntsville, Texas (pop. 35,078), where the military leader...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 Don’t Miss Stops on Route 66
Historic Route 66 draws more than 13 million people annually to cruise the 2,400-mile highway from Chicago to Los Angeles in search of Roadside Americana featuring one-of-a-kind restaurants,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Memories of Route 66
Jim Conkle, 71, vividly remembers his first trip on U.S. Route 66—piling into his family’s 1939 Plymouth sedan with his parents and three siblings and riding for days from St. Louis, Mo., to San...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Silver City: Wallace, Idaho
Ron Dionne, 61, boards an elevator at the Galena Mine in Wallace, Idaho (pop. 784), and descends 3,000 feet to a tunnel that he and his crew are drilling and blasting to expose lead-silver seams...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Hatch, N.M., Chile Festival
Jimmy Lytle, 68, kneels in a farm field north of Hatch, N.M., and plucks a large green pepper from a plant soaking up the blazing summer sun. Using a tape measure, Lytle checks the length of the chile....
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 Places that Bring History to Life
You don’t need a time machine to watch American history unfold. Modern travelers can step back in time at living history museums, farms and heritage parks that re-create bygone days and demonstrate...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Horses for Heroes
Riding alongside a fellow military veteran inside of a dusty arena on his ranch near Santa Fe, N.M., Rick Iannucci watches attentively as Chris Chaisson seeks a comfortable tempo astride Aztec, a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Meet a Circuit-Riding Preacher
On a Sunday morning in central Montana, the Rev. David Iverson steers his car on an isolated gravel road toward Forest Grove Church in the foothills of the Little Snowy Mountains, where far-flung...
View ArticleClik here to view.
America’s Longest-Running Christmas Parade
Decorated with garland and red ribbons and pulled by a team of horses, a covered wagon rolls along Main Street in Peoria, Ill., just as it has every November since the town first heralded Santa Claus’...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Main Street Merchants
When he was a child, Don Barriball accompanied his father and grandfather to Chagrin Hardware to buy plumbing supplies. As a teenager, Barriball purchased his fishing and hunting licenses at the store....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Top New Year’s Eve Drops
Moments before midnight, thousands of New Year’s Eve revelers mingle on the streets in downtown Manhattan, Kan. (pop. 52,281). Suddenly, they look up and begin counting as a large, shimmering red apple...
View ArticleClik here to view.
10 Amazing New Year’s Eve Drops
Apples, cheese, pelicans and possums among items dropped to celebrate the new year
View ArticleClik here to view.
Inside the National Scouting Museum
Some of the greatest treasures of the Boy Scouts of America—from the founder’s personal journals to the first Eagle Scout Medal—are displayed at the National Scouting Museum in Irving, Texas....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Whale Watching in Dana Point
Doug Thompson, 64, stands on the deck of the “Dana Pride,” scanning the steely blue waters off the coast of Dana Point, Calif. (pop. 33,351), for the telltale spray of gray whales surfacing to breathe....
View ArticleClik here to view.
America’s Historic Destinations
Fortunately for Americans, some of the nation’s wealthiest and most prolific industrialists and business tycoons shared a passion for preservation—investing their riches and influence in developing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Meet Four Real-Life Guardians of the Sea
Teeming with life and covering nearly 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, the ocean is one of the planet’s greatest natural resources. Because the ocean is so vast, however, humans aren’t always stellar...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Best River Trips in America
The best river trip is the one that you take. Millions of miles of rivers and streams flow across America, from the gently moving Niobrara River in Nebraska to the roaring whitewater of the Gauley...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Why You Should Visit Harpers Ferry
Since its Colonial-era founding, Harpers Ferry has contributed to the Industrial Revolution, been targeted by anti-slavery militants, endured military occupation during the Civil War, advanced the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Retrofitting Atlanta
Fourteen years after architect Ryan Gravel wrote his master’s degree thesis proposing a way to ease traffic gridlock in Atlanta, the Georgia Tech graduate is transforming his hometown — helping to turn...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gettysburg: 150 Years Later
Descendants of soldiers who fought in the Civil War’s bloodiest engagement honor their ancestors by re-enacting the Battle of Gettysburg. Amid the roar of cannon and musket fire, Confederate re-enactor...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fife & Drum Corps
Like fife and drum musicians in Colonial days, Jim Lamay stands at attention under his tricorn hat—a snare drum strapped over his right shoulder—until he and the Deep River Drum Corps launch into a...
View Article
