The records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Irrigation Division held by the Cartographic Branch are fully digitized and available to view and download from the National Archives Catalog. The records of the BIA Irrigation Division consist of maps showing Indian reservations and irrigation projects and plans for the construction of irrigation facilities and structures. The records mostly date from the early 1900s to the mid-1940s and focus on the western portion of the United States. Below is a map of the western United States showing activities of the Department of the Interior: Record Gr ..read more

This past Saturday kicked off National Park Week, an annual event put on by the National Park Service (NPS) to celebrate the more than 400 national parks in the United States and the NPS programs and partners that work to preserve these sites of American natural and cultural heritage. “Two Medicine Lake, Glacier National Park,” Montana. Local Identifier: 79-AAE-20 (NAID: 519874) In March 1872, Congress passed the Yellowstone Park Act establishing the first national park in the territories of Montana and Wyoming. With the establishment of Yellowstone National Park the U.S. Government recognize ..read more

On April 15, 1947 Jackie Robinson became the first black major league player, ending racial segregation in professional baseball. April 15, 2024 marks the 20th year that Major League Baseball celebrates Jackie Robinson Day, remembering and honoring his career as an athlete and activist. Starting as a first baseman Robinson played 10 seasons for the Brooklyn Dodgers, six World Series, and six All-Star Games, the beginning of his career also marks the beginning of the post-”long ball” era in baseball. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962 and in 1997 became the first profe ..read more

Residing in Record Group 19 in the holdings of the Cartographic Branch are three drawings of a very early submarine owned by United States Navy. Though the USS Holland was not the first submarine owned by the Navy, she was the first to be commissioned and is the reason that we observe National Submarine Day. RG 19: Ship Design and Construction Drawings. USS Holland (SS-1). DASH No. 139-5-20. NAID 182787733. National Submarine Day, celebrated every year on April 11th, commemorates the day the the United States Navy acquired its first commissioned submarine in 1900. Hailed as the first true subm ..read more

Original Caption: Cherry Blossoms at the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC. April 1975. (Local ID: 111-CC-96905) Original Caption: Cherry Blossoms at the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC. April 1975. (Local ID: 111-CC-96905) Original Caption: Cherry Blossoms at the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, DC. April 1975. (Local ID: 111-CC-96905) For more than a hundred years, we have celebrated cherry blossoms blooming along the Tidal Basin. First planted in 1912, the cherry trees were a gift of friendship to the People of the United States from the People of Japan. Here in the Still Picture Br ..read more

Clip from Universal Newsreel Volume 26, Release 440 (Local ID: UN-UN-26-440-1-4) Please Note: Primary source documents used in this post may contain harmful language. See NARA’s Statement on Potentially Harmful Language. The scenes shown in this 1953 Universal Newsreel footage are some of the first moments pioneering transgender woman Christine Jorgensen would spend in the spotlight. Despite this crowd of reporters eagerly awaiting her arrival in New York City, Christine was known to be generally shy and quiet. From childhood all the way through her transition, she preferred to keep to herself ..read more

I’m pleased to announce the recent opening of a new exhibit at the National Archives Building, Power & Light: Russell Lee’s Coal Survey, which will run until July 6, 2025. The creation of the exhibit was a collaborative effort between our Museum staff and the Still Picture Branch. The exhibit features photographs from the series 245-MS, “Photographs of the Medical Survey of the Bituminous Coal Industry, 1946-1947 (National Archives Identifier 540230), which contains over 4,000 photographs, with 2,765 taken by Lee. There are currently 1,300 survey photographs in the National Archives Catalo ..read more

When the San Rafael Elks purchased Maple Lawn, the estate formerly owned by California Gold Rush heiress Louise Arner Boyd, they also acquired 150 reels of 35mm nitrate film stored on the grounds. Boyd shot the reels over nearly two decades, from travels in the early 1920s, to a 1941 trip to West  Greenland, with a half dozen other self-financed Arctic expeditions in between. The Elks donated the reels to the National Archives in 1974, where they were copied to safety film and are preserved today. Louise Arner Boyd with a camera (Still from 401-83-28) Boyd was a photographer, a socialite ..read more

412_DSP_WashingtonDC_018_8x10, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/5997922 Today’s post was written by Dan Rooney, Director of NARA’s Special Media Records Division.  The National Archives Catalog Newsletter recently highlighted that the Moving Image and Sound Branch has made the totality of its Supreme Court audio recordings available for research in the National Archives Catalog. The Catalog can now facilitate access to searching, listening to, and downloading digital audio files of oral arguments and opinion announcements, as recorded by the Court from 1955 to 2022. The National Archives ..read more

Today’s post is written by Larry Shockley, archives specialist in NARA’s Office of Innovation.  In 1972 a freelance photographer by the name of Erik Calonius was hired by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to capture photographs relating to EPA activities, environmental problems, and everyday American life in the 1970’s. Many of the photos that Calonius took wound up as part of the EPA’s DOCUMERICA Project. Calonius spent thousands of hours traveling all over the United States photographing images depicting noise, water pollution, strip mining, and urban blight in cities. After dev ..read more