We’re just back tonight from three weeks of travel that included London and a day trip to Oxford.
I have a number of photos to share, but I thought I’d start with this one — of a seat roughly carved from a tree stump left at the edge of a path along the River Cherwell, behind Magdalen College, Oxford.
“Highway U.S. 30, Sweetwater County, Wyoming” by Arthur Rothstein, March 1940, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Eternal prairie and grass, with occasional groups of trees. Frémont prefers this to every other landscape. To me it is as if someone would prefer a book with blank pages to a good story.
– Charles Preuss, Exploring with Frémont
Preuss was a mapmaker who accompanied John Frémont on two of his explorations of the American West in the 1840s. Together, they mapped the Oregon Trail and discovered Lake Tahoe.
Frémont — who was later the first Republican candidate for President — always played the iconic hero-explorer; Preuss, at least in his diaries, was a grumbling realist. “My pants are torn,” was the gist of his comments for the day the Frémont planted an American flag on what he believed was the highest place in the Rocky Mountains.
There’s a funny account of Preuss, here, on This American Life: “The Homesick Explorer.” And here.
“George Barbee, 13 years old topping. . . . Nicholas County, Kentucky” by Lewis Hine, August 1916, via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Tobacco plants have to be topped and suckered in order to produce good leaves for market. The flowers of Nicotiana tabacum are pink.
A short documentary about traditional tobacco growing methods is here.
“Fence style — Hebron Lutheran Church, State Routes 638 & 654, Madison, Madison Co., Virginia.” The photo — taken 1937 or 1941, photographer unknown — is part of an Historic American Building Survey (report written 1979), via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The church was constructed in 1740 by German settlers. The Madison area is between the cities of Culpepper and Charlottesville.
The church and at least one of its platforms (there were three) still exist, but the fence is gone.
I’m traveling for the next week or so, but I’ll be posting a “vintage landscape” from time to time. Thanks for your comments. I’ll try to answer everyone when I get home.
“Table in picnic grove set for St. Thomas church supper near Bardstown, Kentucky,” August 1940, by Marion Post Wolcott via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
enclos*ure 