America's Historylands/Vacationland U.S.A. [antikvár]

Foreword Standing on deck in mask, wet suit, and flippers, a heavy tank strapped on my back, I anxiously watched my companions add weights to my belt. As If I didn't already have enough on to make me sink like a stone! "Good heavens," I thought, "they're trying todrown me." With family and friends, I had sailed my yawl White Mist up the Hudson, off to explore northeastern America by water. Lake Champlain offered unexpected adventure: a chance to join in a search for sunken Revolutionary War ships. I am not a strong swimmer; besides, I had never mastered scuba-diving. But the desire to find something new won out, and I followed the experts over the side. Strange. Instead of plummeting to the bottom, I felt an extraordinary lightness, and I could breathe quite normally. It seemed so effortless to descend and rise. A wondrous realm opened before my eyes. Yes, I had the thrill of surfacing with a plank pried from an old wreck. From 1776? No, but I treasure the joy of that quest, and the discovery that at 67 I was still ready for the challenge of a new vacation adventure. Challenge. Quest. Discovery. Joy. No longer are most Americans content to vacation in a hammock. Forty million a year pitch a tent or park a trailer at one of the Nation's 500,000 campsites. Millions more fill the seasons with hiking, biking, spelunking, trail-riding, canoeing, bird-watching, clambaking, skiing. But then, we've always been a nation of doers. We had to make our own life on the frontier, had to entertain ourselves. We learned and grew by taking on new challenges. Restless, curious, we were ever eager to see what lay beyond the horizon. Our Space Age vacations reflect that tradition. Pioneers opened the spacious West with their house on wheels, the prairie schooner. Today we're rediscovering the land in camper, trailer, or motor home. And, just as astronauts on the moon look back to earth with new perspective, this change of scene enables us to examine our own lives with fresh eyes. Pit your wits against a trout in a sparkling mountain stream and cares fall away. Relaxed, re-created through challenging activity, I've often come up with solutions to problems that had plagued me. A do-it-together vacation is an investment in family strength —and in America's future. I've found that hiking, foreword Gettysburg was only a name to me until my fattier took me there. As I played sniper in Devil's Den, clambered up Little Round Top, and hiked across the field of Pickett's charge, 1 felt a mounting sense of excitement. I was walking in the footsteps of men who had fought, suffered, and died there. Then 1 began to perceive, beyond these fields and the thunder of cannon, the grave and grand significance of what had taken place on this hallowed ground. When my grandmother and I wandered through Old North Church in Boston, she recited "Paul Revere's Ride" for me. She showed me, too, the witchcraft sites in Salem. 1 magine the tingle one small boy felt on learning, in the home of Rebecca Nurse, that this martyr who was hanged on Gallows Hill was an ancestor! So was George Jacobs, executed as a wizard in that dark year of 1692. The Jamestown colonist, Deerfield settler, the IVIinuteman, Alamo defender, Oregon pioneer, the sodbuster's wife on the lonely plains, the immigrant family glimpsing the Statue of Liberty —all these are our forefathers, yours and mine. Their story, and the landmarks they left, are the story of this book. America's Historylands grew out of the Society's immensely popnlM America's Wonderlands, The National Parks. In that book we presented the beautiful face of America. How wonderful it would be, we thought, to create a companion volume that would capture the heart, spirit, and stirring traditions of America in terms of the places where the great events occurred. This book takes the families of America to those landmarks, to stand on ground trod by their forefathers, and to relive their glorious deeds. Here is exciting history linked with fascinating places you can visit. Here we have people, flesh-and-blood people from many lands, living the dramas that transformed our nation from the wilderness of the wolf howl to the throbbing giant of today. Much love, much learning have gone into this volume. National Geographic's Book Service staff, sparked and guided by skilled editor Merle Severy, have distilled the essence of diaries, explorers'journals, biographies, histories. They have gleaned authentic scenes and portraits from archives, galleries, private collections the nation over. Staff writers and photographers traveled thousands of miles to make you feel "you are there"; cartographers created easy-to-follow maps. America's beloved historian, Carl Sandburg, and other famous scholars contributed chapters rich with their knowledge. Researchers, librarians, curators and custodians, owners of historic homes, state and regional historians, Conrad Wirth and the dedicated men in the National Park Service —all helped. Now, continuing demand for this widely acclaimed volume has necessitated a new edition. We have enriched it with 71 new color illustrations, and project editor Ross Bennett has double-checked with authorities throughout the country to bring up to date this exciting guide to America's Historylands.