District of Columbia, Washington
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During the late evening of July 12, 1864, 40 Union soldiers that perished while defending Washington DC from a two day Confederate attack (known as the Battle of Fort Stevens) were laid to rest here in what was once an apple orchard. President Abraham Lincoln, who attended the burial ceremony, dedicated the land as hallowed ground, making Battlefield National Cemetery one of America's small national cemeteries.
Between the 1870s and early 1900s a Superintendent's Lodge, rostrum, flagpole, and regimental monuments were added to the cemetery to pay tribute to the brave men who sacrificed all to preserve this nation and its capital city. In addition to the fallen soldiers, and the cemetery also holds the remains of the wife and three children of August Armbrecht, the original superintendent of the cemetery.
(War, US Civil) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
During the late evening of July 12, 1864, 40 Union soldiers that perished while defending Washington DC from a two day Confederate attack (known as the Battle of Fort Stevens) were laid to rest here in what was once an apple orchard. President Abraham Lincoln, who attended the burial ceremony, dedicated the land as hallowed ground, making Battlefield National Cemetery one of America's small national cemeteries.
Between the 1870s and early 1900s a Superintendent's Lodge, rostrum, flagpole, and regimental monuments were added to the cemetery to pay tribute to the brave men who sacrificed all to preserve this nation and its capital city. In addition to the fallen soldiers, and the cemetery also holds the remains of the wife and three children of August Armbrecht, the original superintendent of the cemetery.
(War, US Civil) Includes location, directions, 6 photos, GPS coordinates, map.
Corsicana resident A. L. Lemon built this home in 1895 of Louisiana cypress. In 1902 it was sold to John Wesley Edens. The owner of 2400 acres of local farm and ranch land, Edens had served the area as deputy sheriff, tax collector, and city councilman. The late Victorian style house, which features some Eastlake and Queen Anne detailing, remained in the Edens family for more than forty years.
Honoring Allen Griffin, 1893-1981, founder and publisher of the Monterey Peninsula Herald for his outstanding contributions to the City of Monterey.
At some time within the last several thousand years, an eruption of magna from the bottom of the earth crust sent a broad stream of hot liquid rock across this land. The flow started to your right, 3.2 kilometers (2 miles) south of here at the site of a spatter cone formation known as a Field of Chimneys. When the eruption stopped, the lava cooled and hardened into its present form, but how did it look like a river of rocks?
From this command post, the U.S. Army directed part of a frustrating campaign against a small band of Modoc Indians. Determined to defend their homeland, the Modoc consistently outmaneuvered the Army, who at times outnumbered them ten to one. Just over six months of battles and surprise attacks, interspersed with long periods of waiting, resulted in a final Modoc defeat. Significant Modoc War sites are located and interpreted throughout the park. See inset map.
Imagine watching hot lava flowing toward you at this spot over twelve thousand years ago. Like treads rolling on a tank, the clinker, cooling front of the flow fell off and was run over by the hot molten core. The Devils Homestead flow, which erupted from Fleener Chimneys more that a mile south of here, provides an excellent example of rough a’a lava. More fluid pahoehoe lava leaves behind a smooth, ropy surface. The wide variety of eruptions here at Lava Beds and the abundant features left behind make this area an exceptional place to explore volcano geology.
Preserved for its caves and volcanic features since 1925, Lava Beds serves as an outdoor school for professional and amateur geologists alike. While the monument covers only ten percent of the surface area of the massive Medicine Lake shield volcano — the largest in the Cascades Range — it contains excellent examples of the many formations volcanic eruptions can leave behind. Here you can explore dozens of lava tube caves, hike to the top of a cinder cone, peer into a hollow spatter cone, and marvel at wide expanses of jagged lava fields. All these features formed rapidly during eruptive periods as lava exploded into the air or flowed downhill for miles. Though the volcano is a half-million years old, its most recent eruption at Glass Mountain occurred only 900 years ago. This suggests that lava may someday erupt here again, erasing old features and recreating the landscape once more.
It is difficult today to trace the disposition of all those killed in action during the Modoc War. This site was first consecrated January 17, 1873, when two soldiers were buried here. It became an official cemetery in April when thirteen enlisted men were brought from the battlefield at Hardin Butte. Officers were taken to private cemeteries in their home towns or to various military cemeteries around the country.
The Wallops Island Flight Facility was established in 1945 by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and is one of the oldest launch sites in the world. This facility was built to conduct aeronautical research using rocket-propelled vehicles. Its first rocket, the Tiamat, was launched on 4 July 1945. With the birth of NASA in 1958, Wallops contributed to the development of components of space flight programs, capsule escape, and recovery techniques. In 1981, Wallops was consolidated with the Goddard Space Flight Center and is now NASA's primary facility for suborbital programs.
After the rebels were turned back as the Battle of Fort Stevens ended in 1864, scores of Union Soldiers lay cold and silent. Forty-one of them are buried here in this tiny plot dedicated to their sacrifice.
President Abraham Lincoln, who observed the battle, spoke at the dedication. At barely one acre, Battleground National Cemetery is one of the nation's smallest.
Coming over from the Bahamas sometime before 1792, Suries and Frankee Lewis and their three sons settled on the banks of the New River and were the first permanent settlers of European descent in what in now Broward County. In 1793, after reports of their presence reached the Spanish royal governor, Juan Nepomuceno de Quesada, in St. Augustine, a reconnaissance expedition was ordered to investigate their settlement and their rumored ties to William Augustus Bowles, a former British army officer who was then formenting Indian rebellion against Spanish authority. Though it was long suspected that the Lewis's small farm served as a way-station for British adventurers who consorted with segments of the Creek tribes (including Seminole bands) to subvert Spanish control over the colony, King Charles IV of Spain ordered the royal governor of East Florida to leave them alone. The Lewis farm on the New River included a cabin and several outbuildings and there they raised limes, oranges, sugar apples, coconuts, and guavas until 1824, and lived along Biscayne Bay until 1836. Under an American law passed in 1824 following the accession of Florida, the widow Frankee Lewis applied for and received a land grant in 1825 from the U.S. government for 640 acres east of the family's actual settlement, in what is today Fort Lauderdale's Rio Vista and Colee Hammock neighborhoods. In 1830 Frankee Lewis sold this land for $400. Neither the exact location of their farm, nor their place of birth, is known for certain.
The “chimneys” before you built up as hot gasses propelled globs of lava high into the air like lumpy oatmeal boiling over a pot. This lava quickly formed dramatic, hollow spatter cones as it fell back to the ground. Later, less explosive lava flowed out, creating the massive Devils Homestead flow. If you are traveling from the north, you have driven along its entire 3.5 mile (5.6 km) length to the source. The magna that formed both features came up through a long fissure in the ground that runs along Gillem Bluff to your left. Weak spots in the surface like this one allow magna to erupt and form a multitude of different volcanic features.
Congress ordered sculptures installed at Meridian Hill Park long before the park's completion. So many sculptures were authorized that Horace Peaslee, the park's architect, called for a moratorium on installations. He told the Commission of the Fine Arts that the park's master plan was in jeopardy unless future memorials were restricted to decorative urns designed for that purpose.
Born to Quaker parents in North Carolina, Dolley Payne lived with her family in Hanover County, Virginia until 1783. Following the death of her first husband, John Todd, she married Congressman James Madison in 1794. As First Lady of the United States from 1809-1817, her social graces, political acumen, and enthusiasm for public life became the standard by which first ladies were measured for more than a century afterward. Before the British burned the White House in August 1814, Mrs. Madison oversaw the removal and safeguard of many national treasures, including a large portrait of George Washington. She is buried at Montpelier.
