Sunnyvale has been a place for forward thinking and innovation since its founding in 1861, when Irish immigrant Martin Murphy Jr. allowed a new railroad to pass through his land. By linking San Jose�s farms to San Francisco�s docks, he did more than help overcome the muddy misery of travel on the El Camino Real. The whistle stop first known as �Encinal� quickly grew into a center for agriculture, followed by defense, novel suburban development, and high technology. Sunnyvale is a place whe...

What really happened on the circus train in 1918? Read the story of this tragedy for the entertainment industry of the time. In the cool, pre-dawn hours on a June night in 1918, a train engineer closed his cab window as he chugged toward Hammond, Indiana. He drifted to sleep, and his train bore down on the idle Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Train. Soon after, the sleeping engineer's locomotive plowed into the circus train. In the subsequent wreckage and blaze, more than two hundred circus perfo...

The rich heritage of descendants of English, Dutch, and German settlers in the Hunterdon County population centers of Clinton, Flemington, and Lambertville is presented here. Life among the rolling hills of northwest New Jersey and in the three small towns that became centers of that area's population has been faithfully recorded by residents since the Civil War, capturing the rural character of their landscape.

Born on a small farm in rural Michigan, Henry Ford’s humble beginnings were no match for his ambition. Ford quickly created a manufacturing dynasty, bringing affordable cars to the masses and forever changing America and the American workplace. Who Was Henry Ford? details his meteoric rise, and explains how the genius behind the assembly line and the Model T shaped modern American industry.

The history of explosives manufacturing in Hercules began in 1879, when the California Powder Works acquired a site on San Pablo Bay, 20 miles northeast of San Francisco. The powder works, subsequently owned by Dupont and the Hercules Powder Company, produced one of the first internationally branded products: Hercules dynamite. It became the world�s leading producer of TNT during World War I. The town of Hercules was incorporated in 1900, and for nearly 75 years its population remained und...

In 2013, the Los Angeles Section of the American Society of Civil Engineers celebrated its 100th anniversary. The Centennial year is highlighted herein with photos of the many celebratory activities held by the ASCE Los Angeles Section, its Branches, Younger Member Forums, Life Member Forums and Student Branches from Oct. 2012 through December 2013. Articles authored by various civil engineering leaders are included as posted on the Section website throughout the 2013 year describing vario...

Step back to the day when a visit to the gas station meant service with a smile, a wash of the windshield, and the cheerful question, "Fill 'er up?" Since their unremarkable beginnings as cheap shacks and curbside pumps at the dawn of the automobile age, gas stations have taken many forms and worn many guises: castles, cottages and teepees, Art Deco and Streamline Moderne, clad with wood, stucco, or gleaming porcelain in seemingly infinite variety.The companion volume to the Wiscon...

Los Altos would never have existed if not for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Since the 1850s, Los Altos, Spanish for �heights� or �foothills,� was the name generally applied to the two ranchos (San Antonio and La Purisima Concepcion) between Palo Alto and Mountain View southwest of El Camino Real. In 1906, visionaries Paul Shoup, who worked for the railroad, and Walter Clark, a Mountain View real estate developer, saw the potential to turn Sarah Winchester�s ranch near Stanford University ...

Erwin and Painted Post are home to major facilities of Corning, Inc., formerly known as Corning Glass Works, a company that made a powerful impact on Erwin�s history. In Erwin, folks poured steel, tried out the exotic 1920s military vehicle seen on the cover, and attended family Christmas parties at Ingersoll-Rand. Many of these photographs come from before those high-tech and heavy-industry days, when men rafted lumber down to Gang Mills and farmers relied on equipment that required more ...

Did you know a town can vanish? Discover the curious history of five towns nearly lost to history...This is the story of five towns located in New York's Hudson River Valley that met their demise as quickly as they were established. From the icehouses of Rockland Lake to the Ashokan Reservoir towns to the brick quarries of Roseton, only traces of these once vibrant settlements can now be found. Camp Shanks, one of World War II's most significant military compounds,...

Located halfway between Los Angeles and Yuma, Arizona, Indio came into being as a railroad town in 1876 when the Southern Pacific Railroad completed this last link in its southern transcontinental route. Settling this arid land took ingenuity and courage, and Indio�s early residents had both. In the 1930s, Indio became a mining town when 92 miles of tunnel were dug through its eastern mountains for the Los Angeles Aqueduct, the largest construction project in the United States during the D...

Rochester owes much to those who made it the exceptional andunique city it has become. Many of the civic, commercial, industrial, and entertainment leaders who brought fame and prosperity to the city are saluted in Rochester Leaders and Their Legacies. A gallery of rare photographs reveals the images of the founders and their legacies: McCurdy�s, McFarlin�s, Edwards, and Sibley�s department stores; important businesses and products; and entertainment venues and memories. Here are glimpses ...