📍Grand Tetons National Park, Wyoming

"Once, in a boat on the Delaware with some other young men, he refused to row in his turn. 'I will be row'd home,' says he. 'We will not row you,' says I. 'You must, or stay all night on the water,' says he, 'just as you please.' The others said, 'Let us row; what signifies it?' But, my mind being soured with his other conduct, I continu'd to refuse. So he swore he would make me row, or throw me overboard; and coming along, stepping on the thwarts, toward me, when he came up and struck at me, I clapped my hand under his crutch, and, rising, pitched him head-foremost into the river."

📜 Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, 1791
🎨 Charles Herbert Moore, Hudson River Above Catskill, 1865

Flood damage in the Texas Hill Country captured on 35mm film by an activist participating in relief efforts.

📍Hunt, Texas

"It pleased God to visit us then, with death daily, and with so general a disease, that the living were scarce able to bury the dead; and the well not in any measure sufficient to tend the sick. [...] Our weakness herein is great we confess, therefore we will bear this check patiently amongst the rest, till God send us wiser men."

📜 William Bradford, On Plymouth Plantation, 1647
🎨 Martin Johnson Heade, Marshfield Meadows, Massachusetts, 1866

📍Palmer, Alaska

"Laws were made to establish a gradation of ranks; but it was soon found that the soil of America was opposed to a territorial aristocracy. To bring that refractory land into cultivation, the constant and interested exertions of the owner himself were necessary; and when the ground was prepared, its produce was found to be insufficient to enrich a master and a farmer at the same time. The land was then naturally broken up into small portions, which the proprietor cultivated for himself."

📜 Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835
🎨 Thomas Cole, The Hunter's Return (detail), 1845

📍Pioneer Cemetery, Palmer, Alaska