Joseph Elliott in Southern New Jersey

Whitesbog Village, Burlington Country, NJ

Southern New Jersey is peopled mostly by a half-mile wide strip of humanity along the shore and another crowd near Philadelphia to the west. In between are miles of pine barrens, tidal marshes, sand roads, cranberry bogs, and dozens of small rivers. It's mostly flat, so sometimes you can see all the way to the horizon.


If you want to read the classic work on this region, find John McPhee's The Pine Barrens.

Joseph Elliott took this picture near Whitesbog Village & Cranberry Bog, Whitesbog Road, Pemberton Township, Burlington County, NJ, for the HABS/HAER project. The year was not listed, but from the cars I saw in some of the pictures, it looks as though he took these pictures sometime since 1990. In any case, the terrain has not changed much in many years.

Jet Lowe in Houston

Astrodome ceiling, Houston, Texas. (Jet Lowe photograph)

Baseball season again. Though the Astrodome no longer hosts either baseball or football, the Astros played here for more than 30 years. And in 2005, many people from New Orleans found temporary shelter here as they fled Hurricane Katrina. There are more than 9 acres under this roof. Jet Lowe took this picture in 2004 for the HABS/HAER project.

Triathlon With Kids

The kids were all fired up tonight to play another game of One Ol' Cat (the snow is only about eight inches deep now, so it's easier to retrieve fly balls). Then we repaired to the kitchen table for a game of Clue. Finally, we descended to the basement to play a round of Guitar Hero. I suck, but it's fun anyway.

Jack Boucher on Connie Mack Stadium

Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium

Jack Boucher took this picture of Connie Mack Stadium in downtown Philadelphia in September of 1973. The Phillies and the Eagles moved out to Veterans Stadium in 1971, and Connie Mack was torn down in 1976. The Phillies have a nice new ballpark (currently called Citizens Bank Park), and I don't think there are too many tears shed over Veterans Stadium. Except that that Phillies did win their World Series there in 1980.

When I was a kid growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, we used to drive in to the city, have dinner in Chinatown and go see the Phillies. My mom reminded me the other day that often some kids would offer to "watch our car" for a dollar. Connie Mack Stadium was not in a great neighborhood, which I guess was one reason the Phillies opted to move to the Vet.

There's a great history of Shibe Park (Connie Mack) with some nice pictures at Billy Mupp on Connie Mack Stadium. Wikipedia article at Wikipedia on Connie Mack.

Bridge Collection at Lehigh University

Plan of a Bridge Over the Mississippi River, at St. Louis

Lehigh University's library has a collection of books they call Digital Bridges. The plan of John Roebling's St. Louis bridge is from a book called Long And Short Span Railway Bridges.

One Old Cat

Even though there is still a foot of snow here in our yard, my kids insisted that we go out and play our "traditional" opening game of one ol' cat, or shorthanded baseball. My dad used to play with us when I was a kid. I always heard it as "one-a-cat," but have discovered recently that it's really "one old cat." We played modified rules tonight: balls that went off the road and into the snow were foul. The field was quite narrow since the snowbanks are still taking up all of the shoulder and a bit of the road itself. We had a special field hazard as well when one hit ball struck our dog, who was wandering around in the infield.

Working Pictures II

Carl Weese has a wonderful new blog to accompany his picture-a-day blog, Working Pictures. His WPII blog focuses on longer-form work and has a bit more writing. He's starting off with his large-format series on drive-in theaters.

Nuclear Lake Before the AT

Update and note on commenting (22 December 2016): This is the most-commented post on this blog (I'm not surprised). If you'd like your comment to appear, please don't post anonymously. I'd like to be able to contact you if I have any questions about your sources or other information. Thanks.

See other updates at the bottom of this post.

In December of 1972, a chemical explosion blew out two windows in the plutonium facility near the shore of Nuclear Lake, west of Pawling, New York. I taught physics at the Trinity Pawling School in Pawling during the late 1970s until 1981. Several times I explored the UNC (United Nuclear Corporation) property, which was gated, but not closed to public access. I also went to a couple of meetings of the Nuclear Lake Management Site Clearance Subcommittee, which was trying to make sense of the available data surrounding the accident and the current state of the property.


Accident Diagram
This diagram appeared in Nuclear Lake: A Resource in Question, prepared by the Nuclear Lake Management Site Clearance Subcommittee, published in January 1982.

The lure of an abandoned nuclear research facility where an accident had occurred was too strong to resist. I explored the property several times and took these photographs in 1981.


Plutonium Facility, 1981 photo by Ed Bacher

This photograph shows the plutonium building from the west, looking toward the lake.

Nuclear Lake Window, 1981 photo by Ed Bacher

Unfortunately, I don't remember if this window was in the plutonium building, but I suspect so.


Concrete Slabs, Nuclear Lake 1981 photo by Ed Bacher


These slabs and other debris littered the woods in 1981.

The previous post shows the property in March, 2008. The buildings are gone, though large clearings remain where the buildings stood.

Updates

Update (15 September 2011):

• Here's an interesting article from Yankee Magazine (1994) about another nuclear accident.  It also mentions the Pawling UNC accident.
• And another from the LA Times (1986) that talks about the decision to open the Appalachian Trail through the Nuclear Lake site.

Update (9 December 2017):

• Here's an appendix from Physics Today about specific accidents. Pawling is mentioned near the end. Here's the bit about Pawling:

In December 1972 there was a fire and two explosions at the Gulf United Nuclear Corporation fabrication plant near Pawling, New York, where Pu fuel was being manufactured for fast breeder reactors. An undetermined amount of Pu was dispersed off-site,[39] so the event can hardly be less than INES level 4. A NAMS magnitude-4.0 event would be produced by the release of the order of just 10 g of 239Pu and 240Pu to the atmosphere; given that the fire and explosions were serious enough for the plant to be closed down, it is likely that the release could have been one or two orders of magnitude above that weight of Pu. Furthermore, the incidence of chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) in Pawling is apparently 3 in a town of 5000,[40] when the expected value would be 1 – 2 per 100 000 population. The CML Wikipedia webpage states, “The only well-described risk factor for CML is exposure to ionizing radiation.” So the CML cluster at Pawling suggests that at least one serious release occurred from the plant.

• www.simplyinfo.org has a lot of information about Fukushima, but there's a document archive that also has a folder about Nuclear Lake. I scanned my copy of the Nuclear Lake Report and gave them a copy, so you can read the whole thing there if you want. It's not very conclusive.

Nuclear Lake

Nuclear Lake view photo by Ed Bacher


Nuclear Lake, in a hollow beneath West Mountain in Pawling, New York, is a beautiful spot with a troubled past.

When I was teaching physics at the Trinity-Pawling school in Pawling, the Appalachian Trail south of Pawling was a long roadwalk. The National Park Service bought a large parcel of woodland with the intent to reroute the trail. The process took several years however, because the property had been operated by the UNC (United Nuclear Corporation) and was the site of one of the few private uranium and plutonium research facilities in the United States. But nuclear research alone was not the main concern. In 1972, a chemical explosion blew out two windows in the north side of the laboratory, spewing an unknown amount of plutonium dust through the woods. United Nuclear cleaned up the property at a cost of $3 million, but local residents and Appalachian Trail hikers were concerned about the potential health risks.

In 1980, the old buildings and retention tanks were still there on the shore of Nuclear Lake, abandoned and decaying. Nearly 30 years later, the AT has been rerouted, and it now passes the site of the old laboratory and hugs the west shore of the lake. The old UNC sign and the buildings are gone now, though several large clearings remain.

Nuclear Lake shoreline photo by Ed Bacher

George Eisenman on the Dingmans Ferry Bridge

Dingmans Ferry Bridge

This bridge from Layton, New Jersey to Dingmans Ferry, Pennsylvania spans the Delaware River. It is one of the few remaining privately owned toll bridges and the only one on the Delaware. This photograph was taken by George A. Eisenman in August, 1970 for the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER).

If you're ever in the far northwest of New Jersey, near the magnificent Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, check out this little toll bridge. The bridge is just off the Old Mine Road in New Jersey, said to be the oldest continuously used road in the U.S.

Here's the bridge's official web site, including toll information: Dingmans Bridge.

Clayton B. Fraser on the Nebraska City Bridge

Nebraska City Bridge

The Nebraska City Bridge, spanning the Missouri River on a branch (now abandoned) of the Burlington Northern Railroad between Otoe County, Nebraska and Fremont County, Iowa, was completed in July, 1889. This photograph was taken by Clayton B. Fraser in August, 1984, for the HAER project of the Library of Congress.

Jet Lowe in New York, 1984

New torch and flame with Manhattan skyline in background

The Statue of Liberty was refurbished prior to its centennial in 1986. Jet Lowe and Jack Boucher and other HABS/HAER photographers thoroughly documented the operation, taking 230 black and white photographs and 51 color transparencies. These are just the ones that show up on the Library of Congress web site: I'm sure they took many more exposures.

Jet Lowe took this photograph of the new torch with its gold leaf in 1984. The title is: New torch and flame with Manhattan skyline in background.

William Morris Smith, The Chain Bridge

Shorpy has a wonderfully detailed picture of the Civil-War era Chain Bridge (view large for the full effect). http://www.shorpy.com/node/2478.

This photograph is from the Civil War collection of the Library of Congress.

Normandy Photographs

Here's a sample from the Normandy Collection on Flickr:
Normandy, June 6, 1944

My French is poor, but this photograph was taken by Robert Sargent of the U.S. Coast Guard at 7:30 on the morning of June 6, 1944. Here's the French caption from Flickr:

Photo prise par Robert F. Sargent, USCoast Guards (USCG)
Un LCVP manoeuvré par les U.S. Coast Guards et appartenant au U.S.S. Samuel Chase (APA 26) débarque ses troupes de la 1st Infantry Division (éléments du 1/16th IR)le matin du 6 Juin vers 7h30, à marée montante devant Le Ruquet, secteur Easy Red.(Saint Laurent/Colleville) vers 07H30.
Le char Sherman N°9 de la A Co du 741st Tank Bn équipé des Deep Wading Trunks (hottes de franchissement) est visible sur la plage.
Photo quasiment identique à la p011333

Update (5 March, 2013). From Google Translate:

Photo by Robert F. Sargent, USCoast Guards (USCG)
A LCVP operated by the U.S. Coast Guard and belonging to the USS Samuel Chase (APA 26) landed its troops from the 1st Infantry Division (1/16th items IR) on the morning of June 6 to 7:30 am, before the rising tide Ruquet, Easy Red sector. (Saint Laurent / Colleville) to 7:30.
The Sherman tank No. 9 of the A Co 741st Tank Bn equipped with Deep Wading Trunks (hood clearance) is visible on the beach.
Photo virtually identical to p011333


See more on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/photosnormandie/

Jet Lowe in California

Los Angeles aqueduct

Jet Lowe, 2001, near Inyo/Bishop for HAER. Jawbone Canyon section of the Los Angeles aqueduct.

The Atlantic Monthly Now Free

Like the New York Times before it, the Atlantic Monthly has decided to stop charging for access to its online content, including much of its archives. Now, cheapskates like me can browse through back issues and archives dating back to 1857.

The first interviews I looked up are with some of my favorite authors:
Howard Frank Mosher, Annie Proulx, John Irving, and Vikram Seth.

Frank Ontaverous in White Sands, New Mexico

McDonald Ranch

The McDonald ranch house at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. Photograph taken by Frank Ontaverous in February 1983 for the HABS/HAER project. Scientists and technicians from the Manhattan project assembled the plutonium bomb for the first atomic bomb test in this house during July of 1945. The blast, centered only about two miles away, blew the windows out of the ranch house, but the adobe structure survived with little damage and was restored in 1984 by the National Park Service.

If you like a good story with science, politics, war, and tragedy, check out Richard Rhodes' The Making of the Atomic Bomb.

Public Domain Photographs

The Library of Congress has a huge collection of public domain photographs from various collections, including the FSA (Farm Security Administration), the OWI (Office of War Information), and collections from the civil war and the HABS/HAER (Historic American Building Survey/Historic American Engineering Record). The image quality is uneven, but there is some great stuff there.

Apparently, the Library of Congress is now getting involved with Yahoo and they're posting some of their photographs to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/commons.

In addition, an organization called publicresources.org is posting images from the Smithsonian Institution that seem to be in the public domain: http://www.flickr.com/photos/publicresourceorg/collections/.

Update: Patrick Pecatte alerted me to another great collection of public domain photographs, PhotosNormandie, which has some heart-wrenching images from France during World War II. I'm not sure about how these photographs originated, but Patrick invites people to contribute accurate information about them.

More good ways to waste time!

Walker Evans Liked Angle Parking

And so do I. Walker Evans took this wonderful photograph of Main Street in Saratoga Springs, New York that featured a lineup of cars angle-parked on a street shiny with rain.

Here's a link to the image at Yale: Main Street, Saratoga Springs. Evans took this photograph in 1931.

Later, when he worked for the Farm Security Administration, he took similar images in other places:


Hale County, Alabama
County seat of Hale County, Alabama. 1935 or 1936. Walker Evans for the FSA.


Macon, Georgia
Main Street, Macon Georgia, March 1936. Walker Evans for the FSA.

David Plowden on Photographing Bridges

David Plowden appeared on Studio 360 this weekend. There's a longer interview there, but also this wonderful short piece on his bridge photography. He's very modest.