News
By J.R. Manning
March 6, 2013
A teenage train fanatic is suing New York authorities after being arrested and detained for three hours for the crime of taking photographs of trains.
According to the USA Today in a story republished on March 25, 2013 (by Eric Shilling of The Westchester County Journal News) Gregory Grice was 16 when he was arrested on June 6, 2011. Grice says he was stopped while harmlessly snapping photos of Metro-North trains near the North White Plains station in Greenburgh, N.Y. (That's about 30 miles north of New York City.)
The paper reports that the lawsuit was filed March 15 in U.S. District Court in White Plains, N.Y. with unspecified damages. The suit names the towns of Greenburgh and North Castle, Westchester County, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and several police officers.
An MTA spokeswoman said there is no prohibition on photography in the MTA system "as long as there is no trespass." MTA's rules of conduct call for a $25 fine for unauthorized photography or filming.
Grice had a copy of the MTA rules of conduct with him when he was arrested.
Watch out where you're shooting!
Link to story: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/03/25/new-york-train-pictures-arrest-lawsuit/2017631/
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By J.R. Manning
October 8, 2010
The worst fire in North American history took place on this date in 1871. The story is part of an essay on the
Peshtigo Fire Cemetery page here on Landmark Hunter.
There were five fires in the Midwest that fateful night, including one you might have heard of in Chicago. There were other fires that night, most people are not aware of them. As bad as it was, the worst fire that night was not in Chicago.
Follow the link to read the story.
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August 1, 2010
After one month, LandmarkHunter.com is doing quite nicely. I had originally imported photos of approximately 1,200 landmarks from the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record. Since then, thanks to your uploaded photos, the number of photographed landmarks has more than doubled: 2,573 at last count. Who knew there were so many barns with painted advertisements?
New features added in July:
- Advanced Uploader tool for uploading multiple photos at a time. The system will try to use the best method supported by your browser. On recent browsers, it will automatically resize your photos before uploading them.
- States, counties, and tag pages all have an Exhibit option. This is the same tool used on Bridgehunter.com letting you interactively hide and show markers on the map.
- Trip Planner feature lets you enter a starting and ending location for your trip and then see all of the landmarks that are within a short distance along the route. It seems to work best for shorter trips (50-200 miles), but you can divide a long roadtrip into multiple sections. This feature is also available on Bridgehunter.com.
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By J.R. Manning
July 30, 2010
The oldest extant structure in Delavan, Wisconsin is in peril. Delavan is a city rich in historic heritage and prominant citizens are attempting to save the structure from demolition.
Israel Stowell was a transplanted temperance supporter and he joined the Phoenix Brothers in Delavan, who founded the city as a colony for temperance and abolitionists. Stowell built a hotel in 1839, meant to be a stagecoach overnght stop between Madison and Chicago. The hotel catered to Baptists, Yankees and those who did not indulge in the use of alcohol. If you weren't in one of those categories, you were turned away.
The temperance movement came to a close in Delavan in the mid 1840s. In 1847, Edmund and Jerimiah Mabie selected Delavan as the winter quarters for their U.S. Olympic Circus, the largest traveling show in the country at the time. After the collapse of the temperance movement, the Temperance House changed hands numerous times and at one point, in a strange twist of irony, it was a tavern. Its last commercial use was as a used book store. One can see shelves of books remaining inside the building.
The owner of the books, the closed bookstore and the building itself is 87 years old. He is in the process of donating the house to the Delavan Historical Society. (Most of the bookstore inventory has actually been removed to reduce the load on the structure.)
The house is in bad shape and is in peril of demolition. A banner attached to the front pleads for help to save the historic structure. It is thought to be the oldest building in Delavan and according to the Wisconsin Historical Society, is the last temperance house in the state.
The Israel Stowell Temperance House was condemned and scheduled for demolition on July 1, 2010. As of this writing, the house still stands. The demolition order was extended and recently has been lifted. On July 27, 2010, a consultant inspected the property to examine the possibility of saving the structure. Members of the city government have speculated on the restoration of the house in order to use it as a resource center for historical research and possibly to house the offices of the historical society.
The results of the study are due approximately October 1.
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July 6, 2010
- For most landmarks, I've included links to the appropriate USGS topographic quadrangle map. At one time the original TIFF files for these maps were hard to find, but they can now be found on archive.org.
- Scanned PDF files of the National Register of Historic Places nomination forms are available online for some states, including Missouri, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Nevada, North Dakota, Utah, Wyoming and the District of Columbia. I've added links to these documents where possible.
- Missouri maintains an extensive database of springs, including coordinates and average water flow. I've incorporated over 300 of the largest Missouri springs into this site. If you know of other similar databases that might be appropriate to include in this website, please let me know.
- If you don't already have a Bridgehunter.com editor's account, you can now sign up for a Landmarkhunter.com account. Due to a constant barrage by spammers and troublemakers, I currently have to manually approve each sign up. (I haven't even publicized the sign-up form yet, and I've already had to filter out three spammers who tried to register!)
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June 30, 2010
LandmarkHunter.com is up and running! The site still has a few warts, but is mostly functional.
I copied the editor's accounts from Bridgehunter.com, so if you have an account on the bridge site, the same username and password should work here.
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