A town of approximately 3,500 people on the Sheboygan River in Wisconsin, Kiel has had its history captured exceedingly well by a fellow townsman who collected over 110 notebooks of historical documents about Kiel and its people. These notebooks have been recently donated to the Kiel public library. The 120 years of images and documents give a unique view of how the small city weathered two world...

Published online by the 3Cities research project (see the December 8, 2000 Scout Report) hosted at the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham in the UK, this electronic text offers excellent multimedia essays on American urbanism as represented by Chicago and New York from the 1870s to the 1930s. Music, photographs, illustrations, and text are used to explore the emergent urban life of these...

Like many urban areas throughout the world, New York has experienced numerous transformations during its storied past, with certain elements of the built environment existing as mere palimpsests amidst more modern surroundings. Kevin Walsh, a lifelong New Yorker, has fashioned this fun and informative tribute to the various elements of the city's compelling past. The sections featured on the site...

Two Swiss individuals, Daniel Ter-Nedden and Carola Schibli, have established this lively and informative tribute to those places that form the heart of much folklore and legend within the American West: the ghost town. The site contains over 1300 photographs from 174 ghost towns across the West, with the majority of them located in Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, California, and Arizona. Each ghost...

Sometimes maligned, often misunderstood, the City of Angels occupies a healthy chunk of Southern California real estate which has been the subject of thousands of thematic maps, dating back to the time of the first European explorers who began to wander around the area some five centuries ago. Recently, the Library of Congress and the Ira Gershwin Gallery collaborated to present a collection of...

Celebrated in American film, song, and popular legend, the San Francisco cable car gets its full due on this well honed site devoted to the history and operation of this cherished form of transportation. Beginning with a virtual tour of the Cable Car Museum, the site contains a full roster of current San Francisco cable cars and a detailed explanation of how a cable car works. Probably the...

While many persons think of Boston as the first major European settlement in what is now the United States, the once tiny military outpost of Spain, St. Augustine, is significantly older. In fact, the settlement of the area that is St. Augustine predates the European settlements at Jamestown by 42 years. Much of the interesting historical development of St. Augustine can be explored in this online...

Based at the Universities of Nottingham and Birmingham, the 3Cities Project is "an inter- and multi-disciplinary study of the iconography, spatial forms and literary and visual cultures of New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles in the period 1870s to 1930s." At present, the site hosts a collection of essays on the three cities, information on the project as a whole, and links and information for...