The World Trade Center seen beyond the Brooklyn Bridge Across the East River
In remembrance of September 11, 2001, a photo of the World Trade Center one year after it opened. April, 1974.
The following 9/11 resources have been carefully selected by the George W. Bush Library:
The National September 11th Memorial Museum
September 11, 2001, Documentary Project
Source: research.archives.gov
On December 2, 1970, the Environmental Protection Agency opened for work for the first time. Earlier that year, President Richard Nixon and Congress had established the EPA with overwhelming support from the public.
It may be hard to imagine that before 1970, a factory could spew black clouds of toxic into the air or dump tons of toxic waste into a nearby stream, and that was perfectly legal. They could not be taken to court to stop it.
The pictures shown here are from the EPA’s 1970s photography project, DOCUMERICA. These shots were selected from the “In Praise of Forests” collection: Forest snail on an alder leaf, Alder Catkins on the ice, Mushroom lit briefly by the sun, Seedlings.
Happy anniversary to the EPA!
Inspired by these photos? The National Archives in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Agency is inviting students aged 13 and up to snap a picture, write a poem, or create a video that is inspired by one of our many Documerica photos and enter it into the Document Your Environment contest on Challenge.gov.
Look who’s judging: Graphic artist and former Documerica photographer, Michael Philip Manheim, will judge the Graphic Art category; Cokie Roberts, author and news analyst for National Public Radio and ABC News will judge the Video category; and Sandra Alcosser, the first Poet Laureate of Montana and professor of poetry at San Diego State University will judge the poetry category. A finalist will be chosen for each category in each of the three age groups, and one grand prize winner will be chosen by the Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero. The grand prize winner will also be awarded $500, courtesy of the Foundation for the National Archives.
Source: blogs.archives.gov
The Clean Air Act
November 15, 1990. President George Bush signs the Clean Air Act Amendments, deemed to be the most significant environmental legislation ever passed. The Amendments seek ways to reduce smog and atmospheric pollution, which includes prohibiting the use of leaded gasoline in motor vehicles by the end of 1995.
These photos are from the Environmental Protection Agency’s project from the 1970s called DOCUMERICA. The EPA was proposed by President Richard Nixon, and created by executive order in 1970.
Hey students! You can create your own DOCUMERICA records for the next generation by entering Documerica.challenge.gov.
Source: research.archives.gov
The marvel of the Hoover Dam: Build a huge dam— the largest ever built— across the Colorado River on the Nevada-Arizona border to harness the power and riches of the mighty river. Tomorrow will be the 76th anniversary of the dedication of the Hoover Dam. As the Great Depression deepened in the early 1930s, a monumental civil engineering project known as the Boulder Canyon Project captured the nation’s attention and stirred its imagination. President Herbert Hoover, himself an engineer, approved funding for construction of the dam in 1930. The multipurpose structure would store irrigation water, provide flood control, and generate power to fuel the fast-paced growth of southern California. In designing and building the dam, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation engineers were tasked with some of the most difficult engineering challenges ever faced. When the last bucket of concrete was placed in the dam on May 29, 1935, the staggering 660-foot thick base almost equaled its height of 726 feet. Coming amid widespread poverty and unemployment, the massive project not only provided jobs to thousands of unemployed men but offered some of the most complex engineering challenges ever tackled. Perhaps as important, it asserted America’s ability to overcome extreme adversity with technical ingenuity, physical prowess, and unwavering resolve. Hoover Dam, through the generation of electricity and the orderly dispersal of its waters, fueled the incredible growth of southern California— its large cities, its industrial base, its massive agricultural industry— and created Lake Mead, the world’s largest man-made reservoir. Here are pictures taken in the 1970s for the EPA’s Project DOCUMERICA that are part of our holdings at the National Archives. On September 30, 1935, FDR dedicated the completion of the Hoover Dam.
