Bringing you the best from across the American Countryside.
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If the tabloids report it, is the story really true? Over a century ago, many American believed this star had robbed a man to get the money she needed to support a drug habit. It’s a story of one woman’s fight against the largest newspapers of the day…
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Perhaps you’ve heard of someone shooting an apple off of someone’s head or hitting a cigarette in someone’s mouth. It was real life for this talented family…
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Her skills were amazing and totally unexpected. A young lady from the frontier was outshooting men of all ages and that fact had crowds flocking to see the talents of that girl and her gun…
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She is arguably the most famous person to grow up in Greenville, Ohio. You’ve most likely heard of her and the skill that took her around the world to perform in front of packed crowds…
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The years was 1795 and on what was then the western frontier of the United States, a meeting of some of the most notable people on the continent took place in the wilderness…
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It was one the largest forts of its day, yet a place hard to find a trace of today. The events are still remembered though…
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It is a story of westward expansion and the inevitable confrontation of those heading west and those already on the land. The story is one told at this important city…
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The Wright Brothers made their first flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. However, it was the farmers around Dayton that helped them perfect the plane. However, those pastures were they trained were full of dangers…
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Although Kitty Hawk, North Carolina received most of the attention regarding the Wright Brothers first flight, it was this Ohio city were much of the work took place before and after that inaugural flight. It’s a place where Orville Wright was skipping school at the age of six…for what he thought was a very good reason…
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If you were dropped inside this building and had no idea what it was, it might take you awhile to figure out what business operated here. That’s because this place looks at its role of feeding Americans in a unique and proactive way…
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What can you do with an old mattress warehouse? Use it to feed thousands of people in twenty counties. That’s what this organization is doing…
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You can go to many spots around the country and see homes, barns and businesses that served as stops on the underground railroad. What most people don’t realize is that railroad is not just history but a present day phenomenon as well…
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It is one of the most famous railroads in this country’s history…yet it ran without a published schedule. For some it was a source of hatred…for others a route to freedom…
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If you told Columbus’ crew to hang on to the “bitter end,” they probably would not take you up on that offer. That’s because the definition has changed in the 500 plus years since the explorer made his first trip to the Americas…
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We’ve all learned that Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 14 hundred and 92. We know he had three ships, the largest of which was the Santa Maria. But most people do not know the story of what happened to that ship and her crew…
In Fourteen Hundred and Ninety Two, Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue. And ever since, people have been building monuments to him. In fact, one Internet site has a list of nearly 600 monuments to the European explorer.
Since we’re celebrating Columbus Day this week, we thought it would be interesting to help you find a few of the best Columbus monuments and other Columbus-related sites across the American Countryside.
San Juan, Puerto Rico
San Juan is one of the first places Columbus encountered, on his second voyage to the New World in 1493. Puerto Rico is a great place to take a relatively inexpensive Caribbean vacation, and there’s still lots of history to see there. The sites include a huge stone fort built to withstand attack from both the sea and land. The fort is open to the public, and gives a glimpse of the world as Columbus experienced it hundreds of years ago.
Salt River Bay, St. Croix
Speaking of the world Columbus inhabited, you can get a great look at it in its natural form at Salt River Bay in St. Croix. People lived in Salt River Bay for 1,500 years before Columbus showed up, but to this day, you can see the natural ecology of the place. A national historic park preserves marine estuaries and mangrove forests. And you can also see the remains of a fort built by French explorers in the 1600s. You can also see the precise place where European explorers met and clashed with natives of St. Croix.
Columbus, Ohio
Columbus might never have visited Ohio, but one of the best places in the country to connect with his voyages is in the Ohio city named for him. For the 500th anniversary of the explorer’s first visit, Columbus, Ohio, built a 98-foot-long replica of the Santa Maria, one of his ships. Today, tourists can walk through the ship, and even book events there. The real Santa Maria never made it back to Spain, crashing off the coast of Haiti before the return trip.
Columbus Circle, New York City
One of the busiest spots in the world features one of the most well-known monuments to Columbus. “Columbus Circle” is a traffic circle with a marble statue of Christopher Columbus set atop a massive column. It was erected in 1892 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his voyage. Tourists in New York City almost always stumble across the monument, even when they’re not looking for it, because it’s right in the heart of New York City at the edge of Central Park and just north of the Theater District.
Baltimore’s Inner Harbor
Another of the largest monuments to Columbus is at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. Carved out of Italian marble, the monument was dedicated in 1984. It includes intricate scenes of Columbus’s voyage and arrival in the New World, carved into the side. The statue is set in the middle of a larger area known as Columbus Piazza, dedicated to the memory of the explorer’s voyages.
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The Wright Brothers first took flight in 1903 and that plane is in the Smithsonian. But the brothers said there was a much more important plane than that first one, and that version is in Dayton, Ohio. We go there on this edition of the American Countryside.
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Name your favorite brand of car and you can probably find a dealership within a reasonable distance of your home. But if you favorite car is a Packard-well, you’ll most assuredly need to come to the only showroom that remains…..
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It was the luxury car of the first half of the 20th century. Today, the company is gone, but the legacy of their fine engineering is still to be found in this city……
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If you are over 30 years old, you probably remember aluminum cans that had the old pull off tabs. Today, of course, we have pop tops on virtually every beverage can in the world. It may not seem like a big deal, but it adds up over time…..
