The triumphal arch at the end of the pedestrian street Rua Augusta opens up on to Commerce Square. It has been recently restored and is now not only very clean and repaired but is also open to visitors who want to go up to the observation level. The arch was constructed in 1755 following an earthquake in the same year as a celebration of the reconstruction of the city following the quake. It was only completed in 1875.

 

The top of the arch is adorned with sculptures by Célestin Anatole Calmels of allegorical figures featuring Glory crowning Genius and Valor who sit on either side of Glory. On the lower levels of the arch there are more figures this time by Vitor Bastos. Bastos’ sculptures are of famous Portuguese figures including Vasco da Gama, Pereira and Viriato. Two reclining figures represent the Tagus River and Douro River. On the side of the arch facing Rue Augusta there is a clock, stone reliefs and filigree decoration. The arch has six columns reaching 11 meters high and the cornice is 30 meters high. It features the Portuguese coat of arms.

 

Visitors can go up to the top of the monumental arch by elevator for panoramic views over Terreiro do Paço Square, the Baixa district, Lisbon Cathedral, St. George’s Castle and the Tagus River. While inside the arch you can learn about the history of the arch from an exhibition entitled “ Sala do Relogio.” The arch featured in the Ted Danson version of Gulliver’s Travels when Gulliver was wheeled through the arch in Lilliput.

 

Praça do Comércio is one of the most emblematic places in Lisbon. This picturesque square, bordered to the south by the Tagus River, is flanked on the other three sides by white and yellow Pombaline buildings. It is a leading tourist hub due to its many quality shops, bars and restaurants.

 

Exploring the square on foot is a great way to enjoy its historic vibe. Here you will see an equestrian sculpture of King José I as well as the 30-metre-high Triumphal Arch on Augusta Street. The arch platform offers stunning views of Praça do Comércio, the Tagus River and part of central Lisbon.

 

Credit for the data above is given to the following websites:

www.visitacity.com/en/lisbon/attraction-by-type/all?campa...

fr.hotels.com/go/portugal/lieux-emblematiques-lisbonne

 

© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.

 

Toledo coffee is a project that features coffee production in harmony with the environment.

*Features:

- 100% Mesh structure

- 100% seamlessly tillable, several buildings next to each other - sideways

- 100% original mesh and design made by myself

- Fully rendered textures with light and shadows for a realistic effect

- Exterior textures come with NORMAL MAPS.

- Contains 7 Template Textures with full perms (see details below). These textures are for personal use only and can't be shared.

Floor.

Ceiling.

Wall right side (Interior).

Wall left side (Interior).

Wall Middle (Interior).

Awning cloth (Both sides).

 

- The prefabs buildings come in four different exterior textures which are sold separately and also as a Fatpack.

Each pack contains six different building shapes.

See details bellow:

 

Size 11x11x10

Prim count 14

 

Size 11x11x15

Prim count 14

 

Size 11x11x20

Prim count 16

 

Size 11x11x10 With Awning

Prim count 20

 

Size 11x11x15 With Awning

Prim count 20

 

Size 11x11x20 With Awning

Prim count 22

 

- Footprint: 11x11 Without Awning

- Footprint: 11x14 With Awning

- Minimum Parcel Size Required: 512sq. meters

 

- Permissions

Copy / Modify / No Transfer

 

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Antares/138/96/2003

marketplace.secondlife.com/p/The-Village-Shops-Fatpack-Bo...

 

The Hotel Breakwater South Beach is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Miami’s Art Deco Historic District, celebrated for its symmetrical design and iconic neon-lit vertical signage.

 

Design: The hotel was designed in 1936 (some records cite construction completion in 1939) by Yugoslavian architect Anton Skislewicz.

 

Style: It is a prime example of Streamline Moderne, a late Art Deco style characterized by clean lines, aerodynamic curves, and archetypal symmetry.

 

Signature Features: The building features a prominent central tower with an electric-blue sign that serves as a beacon on Ocean Drive. It originally included etched plate glass windows depicting tropical Florida scenes like flamingos and palm trees.

 

Post-War Boom: After serving as a training ground for military personnel during World War II, the hotel became a central part of the bustling Ocean Drive tourist scene in the mid-1940s.

 

Iconic Photoshoot: In the early 1980s, the rooftop terrace hosted Bruce Weber’s famous Calvin Klein Underwear photoshoot, an event credited with helping bring international attention back to the then-fading Art Deco District.

 

Historic Designation: In 1979, the hotel became part of the National Register of Historic Places as a contributing structure to the Miami Beach Architectural District.

 

Renovation: After falling into disrepair, the property was extensively renovated in 2011 by the Nakash family (founders of Jordache Jeans). The restoration combined the original Breakwater building with its neighbor, the Edison, into a 99-room boutique hotel.

 

Recent Developments: As of January 2026, the hotel continues to operate as a central feature of South Beach, though it recently faced financial shifts, including reports of a loan default in late 2025.

 

Credit for the data above is given to the following websites:

apps.miamidadepa.gov/PropertySearch/#/?address=940%20ocea...

mdpl.org/building/breakwater-hotel/

www.google.com/search?q=history+of+the+breakwater+south+b...

www.google.com/search?q=how+many+floors+does+the+breakwat...

 

© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.

  

Yellowstone National Park (Arapaho: Henihco'oo or Héetíhco'oo) is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho. It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone, widely held to be the first national park in the world, is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests ecoregion.

 

Yellowstone National Park spans an area of 3,468.4 square miles (8,983 km2), comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-altitude lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million years. Half of the world's geothermal features are in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava flows and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants. Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the Continental United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in the park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States. Forest fires occur in the park each year; in the large forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt. Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

 

The park is located at the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Near the end of the 18th century, French trappers named the river "Roche Jaune", which is probably a translation of the Hidatsa name "Mi tsi a-da-zi" (Rock Yellow River). Later, American trappers rendered the French name in English as "Yellow Stone". Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, the Native American name source is not clear.

 

The first detailed expedition to the Yellowstone area was the Cook–Folsom–Peterson Expedition of 1869, which consisted of three privately funded explorers. The Folsom party followed the Yellowstone River to Yellowstone Lake. The members of the Folsom party kept a journal and based on the information it reported, a party of Montana residents organized the Washburn-Langford-Doane Expedition in 1870. It was headed by the surveyor-general of Montana Henry Washburn, and included Nathaniel P. Langford (who later became known as "National Park" Langford) and a U.S. Army detachment commanded by Lt. Gustavus Doane.

 

The expedition spent about a month exploring the region, collecting specimens and naming sites of interest. A Montana writer and lawyer named Cornelius Hedges, who had been a member of the Washburn expedition, proposed that the region should be set aside and protected as a national park; he wrote a number of detailed articles about his observations for the Helena Herald newspaper between 1870 and 1871. Hedges essentially restated comments made in October 1865 by acting Montana Territorial Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, who had previously commented that the region should be protected. Others made similar suggestions. In an 1871 letter from Jay Cooke to Ferdinand V. Hayden, Cooke wrote that his friend, Congressman William D. Kelley had also suggested "Congress pass a bill reserving the Great Geyser Basin as a public park forever".

 

By 1915, 1,000 automobiles per year were entering the park, resulting in conflicts with horses and horse-drawn transportation. Horse travel on roads was eventually prohibited.

 

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), a New Deal relief agency for young men, played a major role between 1933 and 1942 in developing Yellowstone facilities. CCC projects included reforestation, campground development of many of the park's trails and campgrounds, trail construction, fire hazard reduction, and fire-fighting work. The CCC built the majority of the early visitor centers, campgrounds and the current system of park roads.

 

During World War II, tourist travel fell sharply, staffing was cut, and many facilities fell into disrepair. By the 1950s, visitation increased tremendously in Yellowstone and other national parks. To accommodate the increased visitation, park officials implemented Mission 66, an effort to modernize and expand park service facilities. Planned to be completed by 1966, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, Mission 66 construction diverged from the traditional log cabin style with design features of a modern style. During the late 1980s, most construction styles in Yellowstone reverted to the more traditional designs. After the enormous forest fires of 1988 damaged much of Grant Village, structures there were rebuilt in the traditional style. The visitor center at Canyon Village, which opened in 2006, incorporates a more traditional design as well.

A large arch made of irregular-shaped natural stone over a road

 

The 1959 Hebgen Lake earthquake just west of Yellowstone at Hebgen Lake damaged roads and some structures in the park. In the northwest section of the park, new geysers were found, and many existing hot springs became turbid. It was the most powerful earthquake to hit the region in recorded history.

 

In 1963, after several years of public controversy regarding the forced reduction of the elk population in Yellowstone, United States Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall appointed an advisory board to collect scientific data to inform future wildlife management of the national parks. In a paper known as the Leopold Report, the committee observed that culling programs at other national parks had been ineffective, and recommended management of Yellowstone's elk population.

 

The wildfires during the summer of 1988 were the largest in the history of the park. Approximately 793,880 acres (321,272 ha; 1,240 sq mi) or 36% of the parkland was impacted by the fires, leading to a systematic re-evaluation of fire management policies. The fire season of 1988 was considered normal until a combination of drought and heat by mid-July contributed to an extreme fire danger. On "Black Saturday", August 20, 1988, strong winds expanded the fires rapidly, and more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) burned.

 

The expansive cultural history of the park has been documented by the 1,000 archeological sites that have been discovered. The park has 1,106 historic structures and features, and of these Obsidian Cliff and five buildings have been designated National Historic Landmarks. Yellowstone was designated an International Biosphere Reserve on October 26, 1976, and a UN World Heritage Site on September 8, 1978. The park was placed on the List of World Heritage in Danger from 1995 to 2003 due to the effects of tourism, infection of wildlife, and issues with invasive species. In 2010, Yellowstone National Park was honored with its own quarter under the America the Beautiful Quarters Program.

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. Another three percent is within Montana, with the remaining one percent in Idaho. The park is 63 miles (101 km) north to south, and 54 miles (87 km) west to east by air. Yellowstone is 2,219,789 acres (898,317 ha; 3,468.420 sq mi) in area, larger than the states of Rhode Island or Delaware. Rivers and lakes cover five percent of the land area, with the largest water body being Yellowstone Lake at 87,040 acres (35,220 ha; 136.00 sq mi). Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet (120 m) deep and has 110 miles (180 km) of shoreline. At an elevation of 7,733 feet (2,357 m) above sea level, Yellowstone Lake is the largest high altitude lake in North America. Forests comprise 80 percent of the land area of the park; most of the rest is grassland.

 

The Continental Divide of North America runs diagonally through the southwestern part of the park. The divide is a topographic feature that separates Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Ocean water drainages. About one third of the park lies on the west side of the divide. The origins of the Yellowstone and Snake Rivers are near each other but on opposite sides of the divide. As a result, the waters of the Snake River flow to the Pacific Ocean, while those of the Yellowstone find their way to the Atlantic Ocean via the Gulf of Mexico.

 

The park sits on the Yellowstone Plateau, at an average elevation of 8,000 feet (2,400 m) above sea level. The plateau is bounded on nearly all sides by mountain ranges of the Middle Rocky Mountains, which range from 9,000 to 11,000 feet (2,700 to 3,400 m) in elevation. The highest point in the park is atop Eagle Peak (11,358 feet or 3,462 metres) and the lowest is along Reese Creek (5,282 feet or 1,610 metres). Nearby mountain ranges include the Gallatin Range to the northwest, the Beartooth Mountains in the north, the Absaroka Range to the east, and the Teton Range and the Madison Range to the southwest and west. The most prominent summit on the Yellowstone Plateau is Mount Washburn at 10,243 feet (3,122 m).

 

Yellowstone National Park has one of the world's largest petrified forests, trees which were long ago buried by ash and soil and transformed from wood to mineral materials. This ash and other volcanic debris, are believed to have come from the park area itself. This is largely due to the fact that Yellowstone is actually a massive caldera of a supervolcano. There are 290 waterfalls of at least 15 feet (4.6 m) in the park, the highest being the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River at 308 feet (94 m).

 

Three deep canyons are located in the park, cut through the volcanic tuff of the Yellowstone Plateau by rivers over the last 640,000 years. The Lewis River flows through Lewis Canyon in the south, and the Yellowstone River has carved two colorful canyons, the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone in its journey north.

 

Yellowstone is at the northeastern end of the Snake River Plain, a great U-shaped arc through the mountains that extends from Boise, Idaho some 400 miles (640 km) to the west. This feature traces the route of the North American Plate over the last 17 million years as it was transported by plate tectonics across a stationary mantle hotspot. The landscape of present-day Yellowstone National Park is the most recent manifestation of this hotspot below the crust of the Earth.

 

The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 37 miles (60 km) long, 18 miles (29 km) wide, and 3 to 7 miles (5 to 12 km) deep. The current caldera was created by a cataclysmic eruption that occurred 640,000 years ago, which released more than 240 cubic miles (1,000 km³) of ash, rock and pyroclastic materials. This eruption was more than 1,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. It produced a caldera nearly five eighths of a mile (1 km) deep and 45 by 28 miles (72 by 45 km) in area and deposited the Lava Creek Tuff, a welded tuff geologic formation. The most violent known eruption, which occurred 2.1 million years ago, ejected 588 cubic miles (2,450 km³) of volcanic material and created the rock formation known as the Huckleberry Ridge Tuff and created the Island Park Caldera. A smaller eruption ejected 67 cubic miles (280 km³) of material 1.3 million years ago, forming the Henry's Fork Caldera and depositing the Mesa Falls Tuff.

 

Each of the three climactic eruptions released vast amounts of ash that blanketed much of central North America, falling many hundreds of miles away. The amount of ash and gases released into the atmosphere probably caused significant impacts to world weather patterns and led to the extinction of some species, primarily in North America.

Wooden walkways allow visitors to closely approach the Grand Prismatic Spring.

 

A subsequent caldera-forming eruption occurred about 160,000 years ago. It formed the relatively small caldera that contains the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. Since the last supereruption, a series of smaller eruptive cycles between 640,000 and 70,000 years ago, has nearly filled in the Yellowstone Caldera with >80 different eruptions of rhyolitic lavas such as those that can be seen at Obsidian Cliffs and basaltic lavas which can be viewed at Sheepeater Cliff. Lava strata are most easily seen at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, where the Yellowstone River continues to carve into the ancient lava flows. The canyon is a classic V-shaped valley, indicative of river-type erosion rather than erosion caused by glaciation.

 

Each eruption is part of an eruptive cycle that climaxes with the partial collapse of the roof of the volcano's partially emptied magma chamber. This creates a collapsed depression, called a caldera, and releases vast amounts of volcanic material, usually through fissures that ring the caldera. The time between the last three cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area has ranged from 600,000 to 800,000 years, but the small number of such climactic eruptions cannot be used to make an accurate prediction for future volcanic events.

 

The most famous geyser in the park, and perhaps the world, is Old Faithful Geyser, located in Upper Geyser Basin. Castle Geyser, Lion Geyser and Beehive Geyser are in the same basin. The park contains the largest active geyser in the world—Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser Basin. A study that was completed in 2011 found that at least 1283 geysers have erupted in Yellowstone. Of these, an average of 465 are active in a given year. Yellowstone contains at least 10,000 geothermal features altogether. Half the geothermal features and two-thirds of the world's geysers are concentrated in Yellowstone.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

In 2003, changes at the Norris Geyser Basin resulted in the temporary closure of some trails in the basin. New fumaroles were observed, and several geysers showed enhanced activity and increasing water temperatures. Several geysers became so hot that they were transformed into purely steaming features; the water had become superheated and they could no longer erupt normally. This coincided with the release of reports of a multiple year United States Geological Survey research project which mapped the bottom of Yellowstone Lake and identified a structural dome that had uplifted at some time in the past. Research indicated that these uplifts posed no immediate threat of a volcanic eruption, since they may have developed long ago, and there had been no temperature increase found near the uplifts. On March 10, 2004, a biologist discovered 5 dead bison which apparently had inhaled toxic geothermal gases trapped in the Norris Geyser Basin by a seasonal atmospheric inversion. This was closely followed by an upsurge of earthquake activity in April 2004. In 2006, it was reported that the Mallard Lake Dome and the Sour Creek Dome— areas that have long been known to show significant changes in their ground movement— had risen at a rate of 1.5 to 2.4 inches (3.8 to 6.1 cm) per year from mid–2004 through 2006. As of late 2007, the uplift has continued at a reduced rate. These events inspired a great deal of media attention and speculation about the geologic future of the region. Experts responded to the conjecture by informing the public that there was no increased risk of a volcanic eruption in the near future. However, these changes demonstrate the dynamic nature of the Yellowstone hydrothermal system.

 

Yellowstone experiences thousands of small earthquakes every year, virtually all of which are undetectable to people. There have been six earthquakes with at least magnitude 6 or greater in historical times, including a 7.5‑magnitude quake that struck just outside the northwest boundary of the park in 1959. This quake triggered a huge landslide, which caused a partial dam collapse on Hebgen Lake; immediately downstream, the sediment from the landslide dammed the river and created a new lake, known as Earthquake Lake. Twenty-eight people were killed, and property damage was extensive in the immediate region. The earthquake caused some geysers in the northwestern section of the park to erupt, large cracks in the ground formed and emitted steam, and some hot springs that normally have clear water turned muddy. A 6.1‑magnitude earthquake struck inside the park on June 30, 1975, but damage was minimal.

 

For three months in 1985, 3,000 minor earthquakes were detected in the northwestern section of the park, during what has been referred to as an earthquake swarm, and has been attributed to minor subsidence of the Yellowstone caldera. Beginning on April 30, 2007, 16 small earthquakes with magnitudes up to 2.7 occurred in the Yellowstone Caldera for several days. These swarms of earthquakes are common, and there have been 70 such swarms between 1983 and 2008. In December 2008, over 250 earthquakes were measured over a four-day span under Yellowstone Lake, the largest measuring a magnitude of 3.9. In January 2010, more than 250 earthquakes were detected over a two-day period. Seismic activity in Yellowstone National Park continues and is reported hourly by the Earthquake Hazards Program of the U.S. Geological Survey.

 

On March 30, 2014, a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck almost the very middle of Yellowstone near the Norris Basin at 6.34am; reports indicated no damage. This was the biggest earthquake to hit the park since February 22, 1980.

 

Over 1,700 species of trees and other vascular plants are native to the park. Another 170 species are considered to be exotic species and are non-native. Of the eight conifer tree species documented, Lodgepole Pine forests cover 80% of the total forested areas. Other conifers, such as Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir and Whitebark Pine, are found in scattered groves throughout the park. As of 2007, the whitebark pine is threatened by a fungus known as white pine blister rust; however, this is mostly confined to forests well to the north and west. In Yellowstone, about seven percent of the whitebark pine species have been impacted with the fungus, compared to nearly complete infestations in northwestern Montana. Quaking Aspen and willows are the most common species of deciduous trees. The aspen forests have declined significantly since the early 20th century, but scientists at Oregon State University attribute recent recovery of the aspen to the reintroduction of wolves which has changed the grazing habits of local elk.

 

There are dozens of species of flowering plants that have been identified, most of which bloom between the months of May and September. The Yellowstone Sand Verbena is a rare flowering plant found only in Yellowstone. It is closely related to species usually found in much warmer climates, making the sand verbena an enigma. The estimated 8,000 examples of this rare flowering plant all make their home in the sandy soils on the shores of Yellowstone Lake, well above the waterline.

 

In Yellowstone's hot waters, bacteria form mats of bizarre shapes consisting of trillions of individuals. These bacteria are some of the most primitive life forms on earth. Flies and other arthropods live on the mats, even in the middle of the bitterly cold winters. Initially, scientists thought that microbes there gained sustenance only from sulfur. In 2005 researchers from the University of Colorado at Boulder discovered that the sustenance for at least some of the diverse hyperthermophilic species is molecular hydrogen.

 

Thermus aquaticus is a bacterium found in the Yellowstone hot springs that produces an important enzyme (Taq polymerase) that is easily replicated in the lab and is useful in replicating DNA as part of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) process. The retrieval of these bacteria can be achieved with no impact to the ecosystem. Other bacteria in the Yellowstone hot springs may also prove useful to scientists who are searching for cures for various diseases.

 

Non-native plants sometimes threaten native species by using up nutrient resources. Though exotic species are most commonly found in areas with the greatest human visitation, such as near roads and at major tourist areas, they have also spread into the backcountry. Generally, most exotic species are controlled by pulling the plants out of the soil or by spraying, both of which are time consuming and expensive.

  

Yellowstone is widely considered to be the finest megafauna wildlife habitat in the lower 48 states. There are almost 60 species of mammals in the park, including the gray wolf, the threatened lynx, and grizzly bears. Other large mammals include the bison (often referred to as buffalo), black bear, elk, moose, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, and mountain lion.

Bison graze near a hot spring

 

The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the largest public herd of American bison in the United States. The relatively large bison populations are a concern for ranchers, who fear that the species can transmit bovine diseases to their domesticated cousins. In fact, about half of Yellowstone's bison have been exposed to brucellosis, a bacterial disease that came to North America with European cattle that may cause cattle to miscarry. The disease has little effect on park bison, and no reported case of transmission from wild bison to domestic livestock has been filed. However, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has stated that bison are the "likely source" of the spread of the disease in cattle in Wyoming and North Dakota. Elk also carry the disease and are believed to have transmitted the infection to horses and cattle. Bison once numbered between 30 and 60 million individuals throughout North America, and Yellowstone remains one of their last strongholds. Their populations had increased from less than 50 in the park in 1902 to 4,000 by 2003. The Yellowstone Park bison herd reached a peak in 2005 with 4,900 animals. Despite a summer estimated population of 4,700 in 2007, the number dropped to 3,000 in 2008 after a harsh winter and controversial brucellosis management sending hundreds to slaughter. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is believed to be one of only four free roaming and genetically pure herds on public lands in North America. The other three herds are the Henry Mountains bison herd of Utah, at Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota and on Elk Island in Alberta.

Elk Mother Nursing Her Calf

 

To combat the perceived threat of brucellosis transmission to cattle, national park personnel regularly harass bison herds back into the park when they venture outside of the area's borders. During the winter of 1996–97, the bison herd was so large that 1,079 bison that had exited the park were shot or sent to slaughter. Animal rights activists argue that this is a cruel practice and that the possibility for disease transmission is not as great as some ranchers maintain. Ecologists point out that the bison are merely traveling to seasonal grazing areas that lie within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that have been converted to cattle grazing, some of which are within National Forests and are leased to private ranchers. APHIS has stated that with vaccinations and other means, brucellosis can be eliminated from the bison and elk herds throughout Yellowstone.

A reintroduced northwestern wolf in Yellowstone National Park

 

Starting in 1914, in an effort to protect elk populations, the U.S. Congress appropriated funds to be used for the purposes of "destroying wolves, prairie dogs, and other animals injurious to agriculture and animal husbandry" on public lands. Park Service hunters carried out these orders, and by 1926 they had killed 136 wolves, and wolves were virtually eliminated from Yellowstone. Further exterminations continued until the National Park Service ended the practice in 1935. With the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973, the wolf was one of the first mammal species listed. After the wolves were extirpated from Yellowstone, the coyote then became the park's top canine predator. However, the coyote is not able to bring down large animals, and the result of this lack of a top predator on these populations was a marked increase in lame and sick megafauna.

Bison in Yellowstone National Park

 

By the 1990s, the Federal government had reversed its views on wolves. In a controversial decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (which oversees threatened and endangered species), northwestern wolves, imported from Canada, were reintroduced into the park. Reintroduction efforts have been successful with populations remaining relatively stable. A survey conducted in 2005 reported that there were 13 wolf packs, totaling 118 individuals in Yellowstone and 326 in the entire ecosystem. These park figures were lower than those reported in 2004 but may be attributable to wolf migration to other nearby areas as suggested by the substantial increase in the Montana population during that interval. Almost all the wolves documented were descended from the 66 wolves reintroduced in 1995–96. The recovery of populations throughout the states of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho has been so successful that on February 27, 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service removed the Northern Rocky Mountain wolf population from the endangered species list.

 

An estimated 600 grizzly bears live in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, with more than half of the population living within Yellowstone. The grizzly is currently listed as a threatened species, however the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has announced that they intend to take it off the endangered species list for the Yellowstone region but will likely keep it listed in areas where it has not yet recovered fully. Opponents of delisting the grizzly are concerned that states might once again allow hunting and that better conservation measures need to be implemented to ensure a sustainable population. Black bears are common in the park and were a park symbol due to visitor interaction with the bears starting in 1910. Feeding and close contact with bears has not been permitted since the 1960s to reduce their desire for human foods. Yellowstone is one of the few places in the United States where black bears can be seen coexisting with grizzly bears. Black bear observations occur most often in the park's northern ranges and in the Bechler area which is in the park's southwestern corner.

 

Population figures for elk are in excess of 30,000—the largest population of any large mammal species in Yellowstone. The northern herd has decreased enormously since the mid‑1990s; this has been attributed to wolf predation and causal effects such as elk using more forested regions to evade predation, consequently making it harder for researchers to accurately count them. The northern herd migrates west into southwestern Montana in the winter. The southern herd migrates southward, and the majority of these elk winter on the National Elk Refuge, immediately southeast of Grand Teton National Park. The southern herd migration is the largest mammalian migration remaining in the U.S. outside of Alaska.

 

In 2003 the tracks of one female lynx and her cub were spotted and followed for over 2 miles (3.2 km). Fecal material and other evidence obtained were tested and confirmed to be those of a lynx. No visual confirmation was made, however. Lynx have not been seen in Yellowstone since 1998, though DNA taken from hair samples obtained in 2001 confirmed that lynx were at least transient to the park. Other less commonly seen mammals include the mountain lion and wolverine. The mountain lion has an estimated population of only 25 individuals parkwide. The wolverine is another rare park mammal, and accurate population figures for this species are not known. These uncommon and rare mammals provide insight into the health of protected lands such as Yellowstone and help managers make determinations as to how best to preserve habitats.

 

Eighteen species of fish live in Yellowstone, including the core range of the Yellowstone cutthroat trout—a fish highly sought by anglers. The Yellowstone cutthroat trout has faced several threats since the 1980s, including the suspected illegal introduction into Yellowstone Lake of lake trout, an invasive species which consume the smaller cutthroat trout. Although lake trout were established in Shoshone and Lewis lakes in the Snake River drainage from U.S. Government stocking operations in 1890, it was never officially introduced into the Yellowstone River drainage. The cutthroat trout has also faced an ongoing drought, as well as the accidental introduction of a parasite—whirling disease—which causes a terminal nervous system disease in younger fish. Since 2001, all native sport fish species caught in Yellowstone waterways are subject to a catch and release law. Yellowstone is also home to six species of reptiles, such as the painted turtle and Prairie rattlesnake, and four species of amphibians, including the Boreal Chorus Frog.

 

311 species of birds have been reported, almost half of which nest in Yellowstone. As of 1999, twenty-six pairs of nesting bald eagles have been documented. Extremely rare sightings of whooping cranes have been recorded, however only three examples of this species are known to live in the Rocky Mountains, out of 385 known worldwide. Other birds, considered to be species of special concern because of their rarity in Yellowstone, include the common loon, harlequin duck, osprey, peregrine falcon and the trumpeter swan.

 

As wildfire is a natural part of most ecosystems, plants that are indigenous to Yellowstone have adapted in a variety of ways. Douglas-fir have a thick bark which protects the inner section of the tree from most fires. Lodgepole Pines —the most common tree species in the park— generally have cones that are only opened by the heat of fire. Their seeds are held in place by a tough resin, and fire assists in melting the resin, allowing the seeds to disperse. Fire clears out dead and downed wood, providing fewer obstacles for lodgepole pines to flourish. Subalpine Fir, Engelmann Spruce, Whitebark Pine, and other species tend to grow in colder and moister areas, where fire is less likely to occur. Aspen trees sprout new growth from their roots, and even if a severe fire kills the tree above ground, the roots often survive unharmed because they are insulated from the heat by soil. The National Park Service estimates that in natural conditions, grasslands in Yellowstone burned an average of every 20 to 25 years, while forests in the park would experience fire about every 300 years.

 

About thirty-five natural forest fires are ignited each year by lightning, while another six to ten are started by people— in most cases by accident. Yellowstone National Park has three fire lookout towers, each staffed by trained fire fighters. The easiest one to reach is atop Mount Washburn, though it is closed to the public. The park also monitors fire from the air and relies on visitor reports of smoke and/or flames. Fire towers are staffed almost continuously from late June to mid-September— the primary fire season. Fires burn with the greatest intensity in the late afternoon and evening. Few fires burn more than 100 acres (40 ha), and the vast majority of fires reach only a little over an acre (0.5 ha) before they burn themselves out. Fire management focuses on monitoring dead and down wood quantities, soil and tree moisture, and the weather, to determine those areas most vulnerable to fire should one ignite. Current policy is to suppress all human caused fires and to evaluate natural fires, examining the benefit or detriment they may pose on the ecosystem. If a fire is considered to be an immediate threat to people and structures, or will burn out of control, then fire suppression is performed.

 

In an effort to minimize the chances of out of control fires and threats to people and structures, park employees do more than just monitor the potential for fire. Controlled burns are prescribed fires which are deliberately started to remove dead timber under conditions which allow fire fighters an opportunity to carefully control where and how much wood is consumed. Natural fires are sometimes considered prescribed fires if they are left to burn. In Yellowstone, unlike some other parks, there have been very few fires deliberately started by employees as prescribed burns. However, over the last 30 years, over 300 natural fires have been allowed to burn naturally. In addition, fire fighters remove dead and down wood and other hazards from areas where they will be a potential fire threat to lives and property, reducing the chances of fire danger in these areas. Fire monitors also regulate fire through educational services to the public and have been known to temporarily ban campfires from campgrounds during periods of high fire danger. The common notion in early United States land management policies was that all forest fires were bad. Fire was seen as a purely destructive force and there was little understanding that it was an integral part of the ecosystem. Consequently, until the 1970s, when a better understanding of wildfire was developed, all fires were suppressed. This led to an increase in dead and dying forests, which would later provide the fuel load for fires that would be much harder, and in some cases, impossible to control. Fire Management Plans were implemented, detailing that natural fires should be allowed to burn if they posed no immediate threat to lives and property.

 

1988 started with a wet spring season although by summer, drought began moving in throughout the northern Rockies, creating the driest year on record to that point. Grasses and plants which grew well in the early summer from the abundant spring moisture produced plenty of grass, which soon turned to dry tinder. The National Park Service began firefighting efforts to keep the fires under control, but the extreme drought made suppression difficult. Between July 15 and 21, 1988, fires quickly spread from 8,500 acres (3,400 ha; 13.3 sq mi) throughout the entire Yellowstone region, which included areas outside the park, to 99,000 acres (40,000 ha; 155 sq mi) on the park land alone. By the end of the month, the fires were out of control. Large fires burned together, and on August 20, 1988, the single worst day of the fires, more than 150,000 acres (61,000 ha; 230 sq mi) were consumed. Seven large fires were responsible for 95% of the 793,000 acres (321,000 ha; 1,239 sq mi) that were burned over the next couple of months. A total of 25,000 firefighters and U.S. military forces participated in the suppression efforts, at a cost of 120 million dollars. By the time winter brought snow that helped extinguish the last flames, the fires had destroyed 67 structures and caused several million dollars in damage. Though no civilian lives were lost, two personnel associated with the firefighting efforts were killed.

 

Contrary to media reports and speculation at the time, the fires killed very few park animals— surveys indicated that only about 345 elk (of an estimated 40,000–50,000), 36 deer, 12 moose, 6 black bears, and 9 bison had perished. Changes in fire management policies were implemented by land management agencies throughout the United States, based on knowledge gained from the 1988 fires and the evaluation of scientists and experts from various fields. By 1992, Yellowstone had adopted a new fire management plan which observed stricter guidelines for the management of natural fires.

 

from Wikipedia

Features: Bronzer, Freckles, Mole, Blush, Evox and Swallow Ears Compatible

 

AIMI SKINS EXCLUSIVE @ SWANK Event

 

Event Period: MAR 7th to 31ST

 

Event Location: maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Swank%20Events/156/218/37

 

@ Mainstore after event:

 

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/September/81/215/22

Paxton’s Tower,

Llanarthne,

Carmarthenshire.

 

TAKEN - Sat 30th Oct'21

 

The tower is 36 feet high. The lower part of the tower is triangular in shape with a turret at each corner. On the first floor there is a banqueting room. Coloured glass from one of the windows can now be seen in the Carmarthen Museum at Abergwili. On the second floor there is a hexagonal prospect room surrounded by roof terraces. The windows to the prospect room are now bricked up. There is currently public access to the first floor banqueting room via stairs in one of the corner turrets.

I captured this view of the harbour as I stood on the Jetty below Torry Battery .

 

Harbour History from 1797

 

The oldest part of the harbour is the North Pier which was built (in 1775-81) by John Smeaton, extended (in 1810-16) by Thomas Telford, and extended again (in 1874-7).

 

The inner South Breakwater was completed in 1816 (by Telford) and superseded by a longer one, built of concrete, in 1870-3 The 1st dock was the Victoria Dock which was built in 1840-8; the Albert Basin which was the fish dock, followed in 1869-70.

 

The mouth of the River Dee is also Quayed and had a small dock opening off it. Perhaps the most interesting features, since the demolition of the hydraulic Regent Bridge in 1974, are the control tower an unusual 5-storey octagonal building from which are operated signal balls; the slotted post signals which control the entrance to Victoria Dock; the 2-storey harbour workshops on Matthew's Quay; the 18-bay, 2-storey, snecked-rubble warehouse on Regent's Quay with its 8 covered hoists, 4 roof cranes and bowed ends, built c. 1900 and two riveted light-towers in Torry built 1842.

  

John Rennie Proposals

 

The original Harbour Act of 1773 was followed by 2 subsidiary Acts in 1795 and 1797. The former was merely a continuation of the previous Act, but the latter gave additional powers. Before applying for it the magistrates consulted John Rennie, who planned the London Docks and drained the great marshy district on the Ouse in England.

 

He recommended bringing into the harbour below Shore Brae a branch channel from the Dee which entered lower down; but he proposed to put a breastwork upon it so that the river water would have some fall in entering the harbour and help to scour out mud. The salmon fishers caught their fish at low tide, and they objected to anything tending to hinder the rapid fall of the river, so this scheme had to be left out of the new Act.

 

The North Pier had been founded on the natural bed of the sea, cleared perhaps of some sand. It had done its work so well that the navigation channel had been scoured out 2 feet below the foundation of the Pier, and a footing of loose stones had been laid down to protect it.

 

These, Rennie said, should be removed, substituting 2 rows of piles, 1 close to the Pier and the other 10 feet off. He said the clay between the rows should be excavated and dressed stones should be put in instead on end. The upper part of the Harbour had been cleaned out by digging out the mud and putting it on lighters at low water and Boating them down the harbour at high water.

 

The original Quay had been founded on the muddy bottom of the harbour, and the foundation was now laid bare. He proposed to bring forward the quay 10 or 12 feet and found a new wall 6 feet deeper. The Waterloo Quay - not so called then, however - he said should be put back all the way down to the shipbuilding yards. Lastly, the proposal to have a wet dock should not be attempted in the Harbour because the bottom was pure fine sand full of water, and a foundation for a lock would be expensive; therefore, he proposed to form a wet dock at Futtie, 7 acres in extent, with the surface of the water above the level of the Quay.

 

The Canal Act had been passed, and he proposed to fill the dock with water from the Canal. The entrance was to be at the bar, which began at the head of the navigation channel. It does not appear that much of Rennie's advice was followed at the time. His wet dock was too far from the town, and it was feared that it would leak, being on a sandy bottom at a higher elevation than the water in the harbour.

  

Improvements inside the harbour were recommended in later years by several leading engineers, the names of Rennie, Telford, Walker, Gibb and Stevenson all appearing in the record, as well as that of James Abernethy who was appointed resident engineer in 1840. Rennie was consulted in 1797, and, although his recommendation were not carried out, it is important to remember that they included the formation of a wet dock.

 

Telford made a report in 1802, and a Bill based on it was passed in 1810 which authorised an extension to Smeaton's North Pier, the construction of a wet dock and spillway, and the diversion of the River's current. By 1829 all these works had been carried out apart from the wet dock, of which only the quay-walls had been completed; the length of the North Pier, no doubt in its extended form, is given as 2000 ft (610m) at this date. Other major works of this period were the South Breakwater of 1812-15, stretching 800 ft (244m) from the South shore at a point outside the entrance and reaching to within 250 ft (76m) of the end of the North Pier; and wharfage along the whole length of Waterloo and Regent Quays.

 

To attempt to describe in detail the whole process of the harbour's development in the 1st half of the 19th century would not be a rewarding exercise, partly for the danger of obscuring the wood through over-attention to the trees.

 

Reference, however, may usefully be made to a general account of what was done between 1840 and 1846 as given in evidence to the Tidal Harbours Commission by James Abernethy, the Resident Engineer; this shows that, in the course of these years, the harbour as a whole had been widened and deepened, some sand-banks at the entrance had been dredged away, part of Abercromby's Jetty had been found to be unserviceable and removed, and likewise old warping-posts and cairns of stones which caused obstruction in the fairway. At the same time, 330 yds (301m) of new wharfage had been built and effective leading lights set up at the harbour entrance.

 

The depth of water at the entrance was now 19 ft (5.8m) and the width between pier-heads 380 ft (116m); that between Pocra Jetty and the point of the 'inch' opposite it was 350 ft (107 m). Navigation at this point was difficult, especially for long steamers, as it was necessary to make a turn of almost 90 degrees.

 

Thomas Telford 1757 - 1834

Born in Westerkirk, Scotland. He was a stonemason, architect and civil engineer and a noted road, bridge and canal builder.

  

Telford's Recommendations.

In 1802 Thomas Telford was consulted, and he recommended the conversion of the whole harbour - that is the long, narrow, winding channel extending from Poynernook to Pocra Jetty - into a wet dock, in 2 divisions, separated by a gate which would be usually open, but which could be shut at spring tides to allow the lower division to scour out the Lower Basin and the Navigation Channel.

 

In 1805 Mr Jessop was called to inspect and report, which he did, but nothing followed. In 1809 the Town Council again applied to Telford, and he gave in a report and proposals with an estimate, and the Magistrates resolved to apply to Parliament next year. In April, 1810, Telford gave in a more complete scheme, the chief features of which were:- Extension of the North Pier 300 feet, and of the South Pier 300 feet; a lower wet dock 2350 feet in length, about 22 acres, and an upper, 1550 feet, about 11 acres; 3 graving docks, each for 2 large ships; altering the course of the Dee; embanking the Inches, and raising the whole above high water; and excluding the Dee from the Harbour.

 

His plan was shown in London to Mr Jessop, and approved by him. In spite of opposition from Shipowners and Shipmasters, who dreaded increased expense, the Bill became an Act. The Provost, Mr James Hadden of Persley, got a dinner, at which Alexander Bannerman (MP for Aberdeen), one of the opponents of the Bill, was present somewhat reluctantly. The dinner bill, he said afterwards was £2 19s 6d per head, and he did not recover from the effects of the dinner for 3 months

  

EXTENSIONS OF THE NORTH PIER

Mr Telford thought that the most important of the works to be done was the extension of the North Pier. He recommended the appointment of Mr John Gibb as Resident Engineer, residing in Aberdeen, and he was engaged by the magistrates. In 1811 the North Pier was extended 300 feet, and when work could not be carried on at the pier the workmen were employed in building a wharf wall at Waterloo Quay. This extension of the North Pier gave an increase of depth of 3 feet, and so well satisfied was everybody that a farther extension was resolved upon: and in 1812 an addition of 450 feet was made, which was extended to 865 feet next year, and completed with a circular head of dressed granite blocks dovetailed together. The whole length of the pier was now 2000 feet, the length of the original head being lost. The 2nd addition had given 3 feet more water, and the 14 feet had before 1810 became 20 feet.

 

The pier had been founded on sand, and in 1813 in a severe storm the sand was washed out at the sides of the head, leaving them unsupported, but the head stuck together for a few days. At length a breach was made between the head and the pier, and the head fell. It was rebuilt with a better foundation, but it fell again in 1815, and was rebuilt with a long slope into the sea and shorter slopes at the sides. This stood well for several years, but the North Pier head cost £6655 between 1827 and 1831.

 

THE SOUTH BREAKWATER

 

It had been proposed to make a breakwater, not connected with the land at either end, to cover the points of the North and South Piers, but in 1812 at the instigation of Mr Gibb it was commenced by extending it from the south shore in the same direction as it had been originally planned.

 

It was finished in 1815, and it extended 800 feet from the south shore, reaching within 250 feet of the North Pier. The cost of the work was £14,000.

 

This had not been contemplated in the estimate, but the erection of this breakwater rendered the extension of the South Pier unnecessary, which was a great saving, all that was done to the South Pier being replacing with dressed granite the original wooden head, destroyed before 1809. The breakwater was constructed of stones quarried at Greyhope Bay, and conveyed by a railway. The stones were tumbled into the sea without dressing or building, the only care taken being to put the larger blocks to the outside.

 

This breakwater was thought unnecessary and in the way of ships entering the harbour after the last extension of the North Pier and the erection of the present South Breakwater. It was, therefore, removed, all but 100 yards at the shore end. Telford seems to have kept most in view the scouring of the navigation channel by the River, and was unwilling to give up the South Pier; but Gibb, looking more to the safety and comfortable quarters of ships in the Harbour, favoured the breakwater as providing a broad space where waves could expand within the Pier Heads. In this he was supported by Robert Stevenson, the light-house engineer, who said that if he had been consulted by the Harbour Trustees he would have advised them to abandon the South Pier and construct the breakwater, because when a wave was confined between 2 Piers it would continue to undulate to the very top of the Harbour. Mr Alexander Bannerman, an amateur engineer who opposed Telford because he would not adopt his proposals, regarded it as a proof of his ineffable folly that he had allowed the breakwater to take the place of the South Pier.

 

The Harbour Channel

 

The Harbour, then being naturally only the channel of the Denburn though the tide flowed and ebbed in it, was very narrow, not exceeding 50 yards in width at the Quay head and 100 yards at Point Law. It did not, therefore, require a great expenditure of labour to make some improvement upon it.

 

At first this was done by spade work and lighters; but after the navigation channel had been deepened by a steam dredger which was procured after 1810 it was used in the harbour, and so efficient did it prove that in a short time the foundations of the piers were out of the water at low tide, and they were constantly falling and needing rebuilding.

 

This mending and patching up continued till 1827, when new wharf walls began to be made at Trinity; but they were built 30 or 40 feet in front of the old quay to have a broad road between the houses and the water. The walls were founded on piles, which afterwards enabled the harbour to be dredged to a considerable depth without endangering the walls. The walls were next extended downwards to Commerce Street and upwards to Poynernook.

  

MANAGEMENT

 

For a long time when any improvement had to be made in the Harbour, or when the entrance had to be cleared, the Magistrates called on the citizens to turn out and do the work themselves. By the Acts of 1773, 1795, 1797, the management was left with the Town Council, to whom the harbour belonged. But when the Act of 1810 was first proposed the political party calling themselves Radical Reformers insisted on 2/3rds of the Managers being men chosen by the citizens, which the Town Council were not at that time. The Magistrates would not agree to this, but proposed the appointment under the Act of 7 Auditors, with power of controlling to some extent the actions of the Magistrates. In spite of the opposition of the Radicals, the Town Council's Bill passed into law. In another Act, passed in 1813 to amend the former Act, the same controlling body was retained. In 1828 the Magistrates wished to have a new Act for the improvement of the Harbour. Again the Radicals demanded that the citizens, who would have to pay the dues on goods imported and exported, and the shipping dues, should have the Management of the Harbour. The Magistrates were anxious to conciliate them and agreed to admit men outside the Town Council to a large extent; but the Radicals would not be satisfied with less than a majority and successfully opposed the passing of the Bill.

 

THE ACT OF 1829

 

In 1829 a new Act of Parliament was obtained repealing and consolidating all former Acts. The new Act was to endure for 21 years, but it was enacted that everything to be done under it should be completed within 5 years, except that the course of the River might be altered after the expiry of the 5 years, if deemed necessary. The Management was committed to 9 members of the Town Council, 5 Burgesses of Guild, and 1 member of the Incorporated Trades. The objects of the Act were to cleanse, deepen, and scour the Harbour; to exclude from it the polluted Denburn and Millburn; to make a spillwater channel on the south side of the Dee to hasten its fall after high tide, and thereafter to close up channels from the Dee entering the harbour at high tide. Power was given to raise £200,000 to carry out the works sanctioned by the Act and to pay a debt of £113,000, consisting of £30,000 taken over in 1810 from previous Acts, and £83,000 additional incurred under the Act of 1810. Under the powers of this Act were completed the quay extending 1900 yards from the lower end of Waterloo Quay to Poynernook, which was not near the modern Poynernook Road, but to the north of the line of Marywell Street, on the south side of the Denburn when it turned east. Its site is outside the south end of the Joint Station arched building. Regent Bridge was also erected, a stone and iron structure 200 feet long resting on 2 end piers and 2 in the water. It gave access to the south side of the harbour, where Provost Blaikie's Quay, a wooden wharf for lime ships, was constructed. Enormous quantities of lime were used as manure at this time, and the Quay for the Lime Vessels was 1200 to 1300 feet long, opposite the angle where Waterloo and Regent Quays meet.

 

THE FROST AND FLOOD OF 1831

 

In February, 1831, during a severe frost, the Pot above the Craiglug was frozen over. A thaw came on the 16th and melted the snow on the hills, causing a great flood in the river, which burst the ice barrier and swept it before it. The Inch Dyke (about the north-west corner of Albert Basin) resisted the ice, but both above and below it the river swept over the Inches into the Harbour. A great deal of water and ice entered the Harbour by the Back Burn at Poynernook, meeting with some obstruction at the wooden bridge at Shore Brae.

 

So great was the force of the current that 3 vessels pulled out their mooring posts and were swept along till they were stopped by 2 large Steamships which had broken loose and had grounded, entirely blocking up the harbour.

 

The old dredger lying farther down was carried out to sea and must have sunk as it was never seen again. In the Upper Harbour the current ran strongly between ships and the pier, and though the foundation was deeply piled, with a platform for the wall, it sunk 6 feet, and 150 feet had to be taken down and rebuilt. In the end of 1831 the Raik Dyke was removed from the head of the channel which branched off from the River and flowed past Torry on the south side of Point Law.

 

This hastened the fall of the River after flood tide, and let the Raik fishers begin work sooner. Then the embanking of the Inches on the south side was completed, and the Back Burn connecting the River and the Harbour at high water at Poynernook was closed up.

 

The interior of the harbour was greatly improved by dredging out the silt and mud which had accumulated in it. Market Street was not formed till 1842; but west of the line of it Trinity Quay had been extended in a double curve lo Poynernook, the first concave curve facing the south-east and the second the north-west.

 

This part of the harbour allowed ships with coals to approach the then Gasworks, the site of which was in the open space on the east of the Joint Station. The extreme upper end accommodated the Clayhills Brick Works, giving access to ships bringing coals for the kilns and to barges and lighters taking away bricks and drain pipes. The Clayhills were high steep banks of alluvial clay on the site of Wellington Road, between Portland Street and Affleck Street. The clay banks were so high that sandmartins built nests in them.

  

"THE OLD OAK TREE"

Much excavation had to be made in the inner part of the Upper Harbour alongside the Quay, and in 1832 a large oak tree was found within 150 yards of the Trades Hospital, which was near the bottom of Exchange Street. It was within a few inches of the surface and some people remembered seeing part of a branch of it projecting above the ground in the edge of the Trinity Inche. When taken out it was found to be 20ft 2in. in circumference, and the trunk was 6ft 6in. in length from the root to the first branch, which was 23ft 6in. long, and 13ft 10in in circumference. Part of another limb was 6ft 7in. in circumference and 3ft long. The tree was lying horizontally from south-east to north-west. It was not much decayed, and did not seem to have lain very long where it was found. There were anciently many oak trees in the Forest of Birse, and as that parish is liable to heavy rains, causing floods in the Feugh when the wind is in the South-east in autumn, the tree may have come from Birse. A South-east wind would have prevented it from going out to sea and would have blown it into the north-west corner of the estuary of the Dee. There were anciently many oaks in some parts of Aberdeenshire; but the oak rarely produces ripe acorns in the north of Scotland, and most likely they had been grown from acorns imported from England. The introduction of the oak into Scotland may be ascribed either to Margaret, wife of Malcolm Canmore, an English lady, or to David I., her youngest son, who had been much in England before he became King. The oak tree was set up near the then Inches (now Commercial Road/Quay) at the far end of Regents Road in 1836, where it stood till it was found to be somewhat in the way. It suffered from a fire in an adjoining Timber Yard and was removed to the Duthie Park (Inset).

 

Permanently berthed in Aberdeen Harbour was HMS Clyde a Naval Training Ship. HMS Clyde was a man o' war with 14 guns and 1081 tons. The ship was for a long time moored in the Upper Dock where it served as a training ship. Connected to the quay by a floating gangway, the ship was open to visitors on Sunday mornings. After being shifted to Albert Quay it was towed away to be scrapped.

 

THE EXCAVATION OF VICTORIA DOCK

 

The Lower Jetty at the south end of Pocra Quay was removed in 1832. Apparently no useful purpose was served by its removal, but the stones forming it were good and were utilised in building part of Waterloo Quay. The greatest improvement effected on the Harbour under the Act of 1829 was the excavation of Victoria Dock (though it did not bear that name till afterwards) and the making up of the Inches. Before 1829 the Harbour near the head of Waterloo Quay was only 60 yards wide, and its south side was where the north edge of the dock is. Under the Act of 1829 the dock was excavated, the quay was completed in 1804, and the old harbour was filled up. From Market Street to Church Street the whole of the old harbour is now covered by the Quays. Below Church Street the area of the old harbour was in the space now covered by the east end of the dock and the tidal harbour. These works cost £122,200, and as the working powers of the Act expired in 1834 there was neither time nor money to do anything at the entrance of the harbour or to attempt the formation of a wet dock.

 

Mr James Walker's Proposals.

 

In 1837, when there were still thirteen years of the Act to run, there being a clamant demand for the immediate completion of the harbour by the formation of a wet dock, the Harbour Trustees resolved to have the harbour surveyed and examined by an engineer of eminence and experience. Mr James Walker, civil engineer, London, was selected to examine and report upon the subject of a wet dock. He came to Aberdeen in January, 1838, and after examining plans, sections, and reports in the possession of the Trustees, and hearing the opinions and wishes of all concerned he gave in a plan and report in April of the same year.

 

He recommended the formation of a dock in the harbour by a lock at Lime Street, with a gate at Regent Bridge forming an inner dock above it. About 160 yards of the upper end of the harbour was to be cut off and filled up; but the remainder was to be widened, and new quays were to be formed on the south and east sides; the tidal harbour was to be greatly extended by prolonging Provost Blaikie's Quay to the eastward ; the river was to be diverted southward; and a new spill water channel was to be formed on the south side of the river to prevent opposition from the salmon fishers.

 

A bill was brought into Parliament in 1839 to carry out Mr Walker's proposals ; but it unexpectedly met with opposition from shopkeepers on account of the increasing shore dues proposed to be levied on their goods, from the shipping companies, and from Messrs Hogarth, Reid, and Pirie, who proposed a Dock in the river with a new channel for it. The bill, moreover, was opposed in Committee by the City member of Parliament, who had agreed to introduce it and had promised to give his best aid and assistance in carrying it through Parliament. The decision of the Committee was unanimously against the bill, and it was lost, mainly apparently on the ground that due time had not been given to the inhabitants to consider it maturely. Nothing was done for three years.

 

THE ACT OF 1843 — Mr James Abernethy's Proposals.

 

Notwithstanding the rejection of the bill of 1839 there was still a great desire for a wet dock, and in 1842 Provost Thomas Blaikie called a public meeting of the citizens to obtain their sanction to a bill for the improvement of the harbour by the construction of a wet dock and the extension of the quays, and the removal of the nuisance caused by the infall of sewers into the harbour. A large meeting was held, at which a Committee was appointed to consider schemes and plans and to prepare a new Harbour Bill. Several schemes and plans were considered : — three by Mr James Walker, London; four by Mr Alexander Gibb, engineer, Aberdeen; one by Mr William Leslie, Aberdeen; and two by Mr James Abernethy, Resident Harbour Engineer, Aberdeen.

 

The plan by Mr James Abernethy was adopted, which showed the upper part of the harbour converted into a wet dock by a lock at the end of York Place, by it ships could pass in and out of the dock at any state of the tide, and alongside of it there was another lock with a single gate by which ships of any length could easily pass in and out at high tide. The dock was to be divided into 2 parts by Regent Bridge and a pier extending southward from the bridge.

 

The upper part was shown to be 550 feet wide, with its north and south sides parallel; and the south-west corner of Victoria Dock was to be extended till its South side came into line with the South side of the Upper Dock. Two jetties were proposed to give more berths for ships, 1 extending Southward into the Harbour at Sugarhouse Lane, and the other at Market Street.

 

The west end of the Old Harbour was to be filled up, and the new Upper Dock was not to go beyond Stirling Street. The bill passed, and operations were begun at once, but the 1st Contractors failed after making some progress, and they abandoned the contract.

 

The Aberdeen Railway Act was passed in 1844, and as the station was planned to be between the Market and Guild Street it was seen that the Railway Company would need the whole of the Upper Harbour west of the line of Market Street, so instead of the jetty a Quay was made. The other jetty, at Sugarhouse Lane, was also relinquished.

 

The Upper Dock was widened out at its West end and narrowed at its East end; the pier extending south from Regent Bridge was abandoned; and the extension of the South-west corner of Victoria Dock was also given up, so that the South side of the 2 docks is not parallel to Regent Quay as was proposed in the plan sanctioned by Parliament. The plan adopted was probably cheaper than James Abernethy's, but not so shapely in appearance.

 

THE HARBOUR AND THE RAILWAY

The resolution of the Aberdeen Railway Company to abandon the site on the north side of Guild Street, which they had at first selected for their station, for a larger and more commodious site on the south side required new Acts of Parliament, both for the Harbour Commissioners to sell part of their ground and for the railway company to buy it. The railway company wished to acquire not only the Inner Dock, but the part of the Inches west of Regent Bridge. The Harbour Commissioners, however, resolved to retain for themselves ground sufficient for the foundation of a quay in the line of Market Street and a row of houses on the west side of the quay, and also the whole of the ground lying east of the line of the new quay.

  

THE LIME BASIN AND THE CANAL BASIN

The dust of calcined limestone is injurious to the clothing and the persons of those on whom it lights, and ships freighted with lime were ordained to discharge their cargoes at a place apart from other ships. The part of the harbour assigned to them was what is now covered by the south end of Waterloo Railway Station, lying west of Church Street. When the Canal Company was formed in 1797 it was settled that the canal was to terminate beside the Lime Basin, and a lime shed was erected for storing lime discharged from ships, where it would be near the canal barges which conveyed it into the interior of the county. The Canal Basin was on the north-west of the Lime Basin, both lying between the ends of Commerce Street and Canal Terrace; but the south end of the terrace has been absorbed into the railway station. Both the Lime Basin and the Canal Basin were originally within the harbour area, being in the wide mouth of the Powcreek Burn; but though they were in close proximity to one another, there was no connection between them. The Lime Basin was merely a nook of the harbour, quite open to it on the west side. The Canal Basin was an excavation with a road between it and the harbour, made on material excavated from the basin. The water in the Canal Basin was fresh, and only its overflow entered the harbour. That it was originally part of the harbour is shown by Kennedy's " Annals," wherein there is mention of ships' anchors being found when it was excavated. The. south end of Waterloo Quay began to be formed in 1811, and when it was extended to its full length northward and joined to Regent Quay the Lime Basin was cut off and rendered useless for ships. For their use a wooden wharf was formed at Provost Blaikie's Quay, on the other side of the harbour, well towards the upper end, to be near Regent Bridge, so as to shorten the cartage of lime between the ships and the Canal. In 1834 the Canal was connected with the harbour by a sea lock, and in 1835 the old Lime Basin was filled up and afterwards built upon.

 

Kennedys Annals 1818

 

In 1844 the Great North of Scotland Railway Act was passed, and in view of this an agreement was entered into between the Canal Company and the Railway Company that after the passing of the Act the Canal should be worked for the Railway Company and transferred to them when its bed was required for the construction of the railway. It was given up in 1853, and the Canal Basin and the site of the old Lime Basin were required for the formation of Waterloo Railway Station.

 

After the formation of the dock-gates in 1848 and the subsequent dredging of the Victoria Dock no new works requiring the borrowing of more money were undertaken for a long time; but the penalty for making a harbour in the mouth of a river had constantly to be paid in the shape of unceasing dredging of sand and gravel brought down by the Dee. This is deposited where the outflow of the river is met by the influx of the tide. When the current of the river is brought to rest the sand and gravel which roll along its bed sink to the bottom and form a firm, compact bed which can be removed only by dredging.

 

THE ACT OF 1868

 

In 1867 the great increase of the harbour revenue induced the Commissioners to think of undertaking new works for the improvement of the harbour; and Messrs Hawkshaw and Abernethy, Consulting Engineers, were employed to report on the best means of improving the harbour. Following upon their report a bill was introduced into Parliament, which became an Act in 1868.

 

This Act repealed and consolidated the Acts of 1843 and 1844. It vested the management of the harbour in a Commission composed of the Town Council and twelve elected members, with a duration of 55 years. In 1923 the harbour reverts to the Town Council.

 

The Commissioners hold a statutory meeting on the first Monday of the year, and monthly meetings thereafter. The limits of Aberdeen Harbour include the mouths of the Don and Dee, and the intermediate sea coast. The purposes of the Act are defined to be : — the extension of the North Pier to the extent of 166 yards; a new pier or breakwater 420 yards south-east of the then existing breakwater, which had been erected under the superintendence of Telford ; the improvement and deepening of the navigation channel along its whole length from the pier heads to a point 50 yards west of the lower jetty; the removal of 50 yards of the north end of the South Breakwater; the removal of Telford's South Pier on the river side; the improvement, deepening, and widening of a navigation channel between the lower jetty and the dock-gates; the removal of 160 yards of the point of the Inches; the diversion of the Dee, beginning at Wellington Bridge and terminating 120 yards west of the lower jetty; the reclamation and filling up of the old bed of the river Dee; and the widening of Trinity Quay east of Market Street.

 

MR DYCE CAY'S WORKS

 

The Commission was empowered to borrow to the extent of £450,000, which covered the debt on the harbour at the commencement of the Act. Mr William Dyce Cay, the resident Harbour Engineer, was appointed to carry out the works sanctioned by the Act, which were to be begun early in 1869, and Messrs Hawkshaw and Abernethy were consulted as to the order in which they should be executed. In 1868 the revenue of the harbour was £2,500, the highest yet reached; and the debt amounted to £180,000, a third of which was for property purchased. £7332 was given to reduce the debt.

 

THE NEW SOUTH BREAKWATER

 

The first work undertaken was the erection of the New South Breakwater, which was begun in July, 1869. As long as the work could be carried on without going under water the foundation was prepared by blasting, and the pier was formed of liquid concrete in frames; but when the work had to be carried on in the sea a staging was formed by means of tall Oregon Spars which cost £55 each.

 

So long as the foundation of the pier was on rock, iron shoes to receive the lower ends of the spars were bolted to the rock. The spars were set up vertically and fastened together by horizontal and diagonal bars. At the top of the spars, at; !0 feet above the sea, a staging was erected with rails for waggons to convey blocks of concrete to be lowered into position.

  

When the new breakwater had made some progress the stones of the old breakwater and the South Pier were used as "hearting." A railway was laid along the edge of the sea to the Bay of Nigg, where sand and gravel and loose stones were got to help to form the breakwater. Sand was also got from a quarry on the hill of Balnagask. The Work was carried on during summer only, and everything movable was removed during winter. The breakwater extends 1050 feet from high-water mark, and 700 feet from low- water mark of ordinary spring tides. It cost £78,000, an unusually large proportion of which went for preliminary expenses and works and purposes other than the cost of the materials used in construction and the wages of workmen employed at the breakwater.

 

When the breakwater was finished the spars of the staging were sawn off at the level of the top of the pier. Though they were of the finest quality of wood that could be obtained - such spars could not be obtained now - they did not last long, and only the upper parts remained sound. Large holes were bored in the spars with augers, and liquid cement was poured in to take the place of the decayed wood.

 

In 1870 the widening of Trinity Quay was ordered. This was a much-needed improvement, as the roadway between the houses and the water was very narrow. The cost of the whole work was £4900, the greater part of which went for paving and other purposes than the building of the quay wall.

 

THE DIVERSION OF THE RIVER DEE

 

The diversion of the River Dee was effected under a contract which amounted to nearly £60,000. Borings made in the channel formed for the river yielded fresh water, but it rose and fell in harmony with the rise and fall of the tide. The whole area of the estuary of the Dee, and also the bed of the river for a good way up, had been at one time a bed of fine laminated clay resting upon sand. Water from the river enters below the upper edge of the clay, and passing through the sand comes out at the lower edge of the clay, where the Navigation Channel begins.

 

As the tide rises the under current of water is stopped and rises in bores, but it runs away again when the tide falls. About 200 yards below Craiglug Bridge, where there was anciently a ferry, dressed sandstone blocks were found.

 

They could hardly have been the remains of a bridge over the river, but they might have been in a pier projecting into the river, at which passengers and horses embarked and disembarked. Farther down beams of oak were found, still connected together. These might have formed part of a wooden bridge, formed with planks resting on piles driven into the river bed. Such a bridge would easily have been constructed — one in Switzerland is carried across a broad lake — but it would have been in danger from ice and snow coming down the river.

 

This might have been the bridge for the upholding of which John Crab made a bequest. The diversion of the river cost £37,000, and as the salmon fishers were tenacious of their rights and obstructed the operations of the Commissioners an Act of Parliament was obtained in 1871, empowering the Commissioners to purchase the 'fishings' at a price to be fixed by arbiters. £38,000 was paid for the fishings in the sea within the new breakwater and for those in the river up to the Chain Bridge at Craiglug.

 

The material excavated from the new channel for the river was employed in filling up the old channel, and by it and the dredgings from the Victoria Dock a large extent of ground was reclaimed. Some material was obtained also from the point of the Inches, which was removed lo facilitate the entrance of large ships into the dock.

 

The Navigation Channel was cleared of all obstructions by the removal of the greater part of the old breakwater and the South Pier, only the end of it being left. Both these works had cost, much money and had been regarded as great improvements when they were made. In dredging the Navigation Channel, cairns built up around posts were found and removed, and the channel was widened out to 300 feet. The posts had been used in warping ships into the harbour against the wind.

 

THE ACT OF 1879

 

No new works in connection with the outer entrance to the harbour were contemplated by this Act; but the channel had been so much deepened that the platform at the base of the head of the old North Pier had become a source of danger to ships entering the harbour, and it had to be removed. At the same time something had to be done to secure the foundation of the old part of the North Pier.

 

By much dredging the channel had been lowered below the base of the pier, and it was in danger of being undermined by the rush of waves inward along the south face of the wall. Large blocks of stones had been laid down at the foot of the wall to protect it.

 

These were now removed, and a row of piles was driven into the hard clay at some distance from the wall. Then an excavation was made between the piling and the wall, and this was filled with concrete. But the chief works carried out by the money borrowed under the Act were done within the harbour. Mr William Smith, the resident Harbour engineer, proposed to remove Regent Bridge to the end of Commerce Street; to continue Provost Jamieson's Quay eastward to join Provost Blaikie's Quay; to project a jetty 650 feet into the Upper Dock from Market Quay; and to lay a double line of railway along the quays. Some of. these recommendations, however, were not carried out. Trinity Quay was narrow, and its foundation was only 7 feet above the sill of the dock gate. Smith proposed to found a new wall 50 feet from the old quay, making it 120 feet wide, and to found it 20 feet deeper than the old wall. Another great undertaking was the filling up of the old bed of the Dee. It would have been desirable to utilise for this purpose the whole of the dredgings from the docks and the navigation channel, but this would have greatly hindered the work of dredging, and most of the excavated matter was carried out to sea and dropped in deep water.

 

The enormous quantity of 22,000 tons of refuse had to be removed every year from the town, and it was arranged to deposit a considerable part of this in the old bed of the Dee. By September, 1880, the whole of the old bed of the river, west of Market Street, had been filled up and laid out in streets or roads, and the part east of Market Street was formed into a tidal harbour, called Albert Basin. The name Commercial Road was given to the new road formed along the northern bank of this basin, where the Fish Market was. It was also resolved to form a quay, to be called Provost Jamieson's Quay, along the south side of the Upper Dock. The cost was estimated at £11,000 but it ultimately amounted to £15,000.

 

The herring fishing began at Aberdeen in 1836 at the instillation of the fishermen of the Cove and Portlethen. Some provision for accommodating herring boats had been made at Point Law, and it was proposed to do more for the promotion of this industry when there was more money at the command of the Harbour Board.

  

RECENT IMPROVEMENTS

 

Under the powers conferred by the Act of 1899 the Old Regent Bridge was removed and a new and wider bridge has taken its place, which is opened and closed by electric power. It was completed in 1905. Part of Point Law has been removed and a wharf has been erected on the north side of the channel of the Dee, on the south side of the point. Much dredging has been done between the dock gates and the pier heads. The sills of the two gates are 22 Feet and 26 feet, respectively, below high water, and the depth between the pier heads is now 29 feet. Sand and gravel and some shells, called Solen siliqua, are driven in during storms to a distance of 300 yards from the entrance, and they form a bar, which has to be removed by dredging.

  

First established as a business in 1136 by King David 1st of Scotland, Aberdeen Harbour is, according to the Guinness Book of Business Records, the oldest existing business in Britain, with a history that has spanned almost 900 years.

 

It is only when we map this history against the development of Aberdeen itself into a busy and vibrant city, and against a backdrop of important world events, that we can truly appreciate the port’s incredible story, and its transformation in to a modern, state-of-the-art facility.

 

Before the harbour improvements began in 1773, and even for many years after, the whole estuary of the Dee was covered at high water. This required such a volume of water that, as soon as the tide began to rise, the current of the river was arrested and the sea began to flow in, which ordinarily caused a scour in the harbour mouth when it flowed out. This state of matters has been completely changed by the deepening and widening of the navigation channel and the formation of the wet dock and the embankment of the Inches.

 

There is less influx of sea water at the bottom, and there is a steady flow outward of the warm, light river-water at the surface at all states of the tide. When the tide begins to rise, sea-water gently comes along the bottom of the channel without arresting the outward flow of the River till Point Law is reached, where the depth of the River rapidly diminishes. Here the stream of sand and gravel incessantly rolling along the bed of the river is arrested and a bank is formed which must be removed by dredging, and there is now no scour in the navigation channel.

 

Foreseeing the necessity of enlarging the accommodation for shipping the Harbour Commissioners spent a large sum in the purchase of land on the south side of the Dee for the formation of new docks. The dimensions of ships are increasing, and they wish to deepen the entrance channel and some parts of the harbour to 30 feet. This requires more money and new powers, and they obtained a Provisional Order, titled the Aberdeen Harbour Order, 1907, authorising them to borrow £300,000 additional for the execution of new works, comprehending : — securing the foundations of the North Pier; improvement of the Upper Dock by deepening, reconstructing the quays, and extension southward ; widening Waterloo Quay and Provost Blaikie's Quay; removal of the Graving Dock; construction of floating docks ; wharves at Point Law and Albert Quay; wharves at the Fish Market; docking of the River Dee ; reconstruction of the harbour railways ; the purchase of locomotive engines; and the purchase of land. When deepening the Navigation Channel by dredging began the first obstacle met with was loose boulders which had been dropped by the Dee Glacier as it melted on entering the sea.

 

These were lifted and removed, and dredging went on till another difficulty was encountered. It was found that solid rock extends northward from the Torry side under the Channel. For a time it was possible to remove upstanding points and decayed parts of the rock by dredging, and a depth of 27 feet was obtained by this means; but the deeper the dredging was carried the further the rocky area was found to extend northward and eastward. It is at present known to extend 400 feet from east to west, and in some places nearly as far as to the North Pier. Beyond it rock is found at the depth of 100 feet under the beach.

 

The increasing size of ships coming to Aberdeen has made it desirable to attain a depth of 30 feet in the entrance channel of the harbour, and this cannot be got by dredging. Hitherto the removal of submarine rock in harbours has been done by boring a row of holes, charging them with explosives, and firing them off simultaneously by electricity.

 

At Aberdeen another method of breaking up solid rock has been adopted. A small ship has been furnished with an iron cylinder weighing 26 tons, with a steel pointed head. This is raised vertically and dropped on the rock several times in succession on the same place. In a short time the rock is broken up to the depth of 3 feet and then the ship is shifted to another place. The apparatus does its work efficiently and economically, and after a depth of 30 feet is obtained all over the Channel an effort may be made to reach 33 feet.

 

River Dee Dock

 

By the early 20th century, Aberdeen was Scotland's leading white fish port and with this came the need for expanded quayside facilities.

 

The River Dee Dock was built between 1909 and 1915 and was used to provide servicing for the fishing fleet. It is now the site for tankers to offload petroleum to the large tanks on shore. This has recently been piled and filled in 2012 to provide more Quay space on the Torry side.

 

Working Docks

 

Wood and Davidson's had a small ship repair works at Point Law which employed the floating pontoons to make jobbing repairs to small vessels such as trawlers.

 

Thanks goes to the wonderful people at The Doric Columns for the above history on the harbour .

   

Aberdeen Harbour

 

Aberdeen Harbour is the UK's oldest existing business and Europe’s premier marine support centre for the oil and gas industry. Construction of the new South Harbour commenced in 2017 and the £350m project will up-scale opportunities for existing customers and open the door to new markets. Combined with the existing port, Aberdeen Harbour will soon become the largest port in Scotland in terms of berthage, and one of the most tidally unrestricted.o

She features all the necessary details, seating for 2 figs, and got an openable front trunk.

 

Can be built in 4 colors:

Dark Bluish Gray

Light Bluish Gray

White

Reddish Brown

 

Instagram:

www.instagram.com/thegbrix/

Steinhatchee Falls and Steinhatchee Rise are tracts of protected lands in Florida named for aquatic features. Steinhatchee Falls includes 1,766 acres (715 ha), and Steinhatchee Rise covers 3,559 acres (1,440 ha). Steinhatchee Falls is in southeastern Taylor County, Florida. Steinhatchee Rise is in southwestern Dixie County, Florida.

 

The area around the falls is floodplain swamp, bottom land forest, pine plantation, and mixed hardwood forest. The area around Steinhatchee Rise contains also includes floodplain swamp, bottom land forest, pine plantation, and mixed hardwood forest as well as mesic woods and wet flat woods. Animal species in the area include gopher tortoise, wading birds, wild hog, swallow-tailed kite, Swainson's warbler, deer, turkey, and squirrel. A trailhead for the Steinhatchee Trail Tennille Trail is on Florida SR 51.

 

Steinhatchee Falls Park is a tourist attraction and viewpoint with water cascading over a small falls on the Steinhatchee River. The Steinhatchee Trail is a 3-mile (5 km) multi-use trail ending at Steinhatchee Falls. Coming off a limestone lip across the river, the height of Steinhatchee Falls ranges from four to five feet down to being almost unnoticeable when the river is high.

 

Credit for the data above is given to the following website:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steinhatchee_Falls

map.mysuwanneeriver.com/tracts/steinhatchee-falls-185/

 

© All Rights Reserved - you may not use this image in any form without my prior permission.

Studio pic taken on September 7, 2007. This photo turned out quite well, so I thought it was worth a second look and repost. Edited the photo to bring out my best features.

Pacific Fair Shopping Centre in Broadbeach,Gold Coast, Queensland Australia. August 2018.

 

The shopping centre has been done up since we were last here and it is amazing.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA - OCTOBER 26: Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong (L) and Ryu "Keria" Min-seok of T1 pose at the League of Legends World Championship Semifinals Features Day on October 26, 2022 in Atlanta, GA. (Photo by Fernando Decillis/Riot Games)

I love the green plants along the white picket fence

 

7 Days of Shooting - Week 15 (w/b 15th October) Barrier: What barriers divide the area where you live, work or visit? Perhaps you have a garden wall, or an ornamental gate. For this week, show us those barriers, including fences, walls, & gates.

Maria Ariana is a hybrid OOAK doll. She has a SIS Trichelle head on a Made to Move Barbie body. She is a full repaint and represents some of the beautiful Morenas/ Hispanic women with darker skin tones & features of the world. Maria Ariana has deliberate dark and dramatic eyes and a subtle muted lip color.She is artistically anatomically correct.

Today the Cow Tower stands in the north-east corner of Norwich like a lost red brick Roman 'Pharos' or lighthouse, yet it has two possible claims to fame. Firstly it may be Britain's oldest 'pillbox' or defensive bunker for the firing guns, secondly it represents one of the first extensive uses of structural brick in Britain. Externally it resembles a Martello Tower or a Pictish broch; it even has the same tapering sides as both types of buildings. Yet other features, such as the cross-shaped gun loops, place it firmly in the Medieval period.

 

www.flickr.com/photos/barryslemmings/albums/7215766430910... to see the full set.

 

The Cow Tower was built between 1398 and 1399. Norwich was a prosperous city in the late 14th century, with a population of around 5,000 involved in key medieval industries and forming a centre for international trade. Between 1297 and 1350 the city had erected a semi-circle of defensive stone walls and ditches which assisted with collecting taxes, advertised the status of Norwich as a great city and also defended it against invasion or civil disorder. Remember that the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 was within living memory when Cow Tower was built and Norwich had suffered during that.

 

Gunpowder weapons had begun to be introduced into England in the early 14th century, initially being used as battlefield or siege weapons but rapidly being adapted for defensive purposes from the 1360s. Although they were expensive, by the 1380s their potential value in defending castles and city walls was well understood and specialised features had begun to be built. By 1385 Norwich had fifty artillery pieces for use along its walls. In Kent, at Bodiam, Cooling and the West Gate at Canterbury, gun loops had been added to new buildings between 1380 to 1385. Firearms were here to stay. Cow Tower is a logical development. A free-standing tower just for gunpowder weapons.

 

The stone walls of Norwich describe a rough letter 'C' with a bend in the River Wensum covering the north-east gap in the 'C'. The tower stands in the middle of this gap. When first built Cow Tower was called the Dungeon (from Donjon) but was then called the "tower in the Hospital meadows", as the surrounding land was then part of St Giles' Hospital. It was intended to function as a specialised artillery and handgun tower, housing gunpowder weaponry capable of suppressing attackers on the far side of the river and disrupting any assault river crossing.

 

There are fragmentary references to an earlier tower in the area, responsible for collecting tolls and acting as a prison. This prison function could be the origin of the 'Dungeon' name but it is unclear if this was on the same site as the Cow Tower or merely refers to a different tower in the general area. Although the Cow Tower was not directly attached to the city walls, a protective timber palisade did link the tower with the city wall to the north-west, and ran south to meet Bishop Bridge. With the eye of faith today it is still just possible to see an raised bank fringing the river to the south of Cow Tower which was either the earth revetment to this palisade or else a simple earth bank to prevent flooding. It may even have functioned as both. The present footpath runs along the top of it and is about seven feet above the adjacent former meadow, now a sports field.

 

The city's accounts show details of payments for the construction of the tower between 1398 and 1399, including charges for 36,850 bricks, stone, sand, lime, a hoist and various equipment. One reason for the tower's height is that it stands on low-lying meadow facing a steep rise about 300 metres away on the other side of the Wensum. The city fathers may have feared that an attacker would set up camp on this rise and use artillery to bombard the city. In 1549 Robert Kett exploited this very weakness when he led an uprising in Norfolk. His army camped on the north-east side of the river, overlooking Cow Tower. Two rebel attacks were then made across the river into the hospital meadows, in an attempt to take nearby Bishop Bridge. Kett had brought artillery, which he turned on the Cow Tower, damaging the latter's parapets. The rebellion failed and the tower does not seem to have required extensive repairs. The hill opposite is now called Kett's Hill.

 

Cow Tower is a three-storey circular building with a protruding stair turret at the rear, the main building being 11.2 metres across and 14.6 metres tall, tapering towards the top. The walls, 1.8 metres thick at the base, are made of a core of flint rubble stone, faced on the inside and outside with brick. Various putlog holes can still be seen in the walls.

 

The brickwork, particularly on the stairwell, is well executed. Archaeologist T. P. Smith considers the tower to feature some "of the finest medieval brickwork" in England. It is the earliest known use of brick in an external load-bearing capacity in Norwich. The use of brick in this sort of fortification was both prestigious and practical, as brick absorbed the impact of artillery fire better than stone.

 

The quatrefoil gunports in the lower levels could have been used for both handgonnes and crossbows with some overlapping fields of fire. The roof was reinforced with large timber joists and could have supported heavier bombards; the tower's considerable height would allowed these bombards to reach across the river to the higher ground (Kett's Hill) which overlooks the city.

 

The parapet was crenellated with nine wide splayed embrasures and those embrasures facing out across the river were constructed flush with the floor of the roof, giving the bombards plenty of room to fire and the ability to depress to hit the river in front of the tower itself. Cow Tower has a simple ground floor entrance next to the stairwell turret and – while this is relatively poorly defended – objects could have been dropped from the roof on to anyone trying to force these doors. This is not a castle, it was a local defence 'hard point' capable of proving a severe nuisance to an attacker… and thus my analogy to a modern pillbox in the opening paragraph.

 

The interior has fireplaces and toilets. The ground floor may have formed a dining area with the floors above being used for military purposes and sleeping. The walls of the ground floor have curious diagonal chasing and sockets cut into them. These may have contained timbers to support brickwork that in turn supported the first floor or they are the remains of a magazine retrofitted in the tower in the 16th century.

 

Cow Tower is managed by English Heritage and Norwich City Council. The tower is now only a shell as the floors and the roof have been lost. The interior is visible through an iron gate. The riverside walk goes past and around it.

Features one large, 4 medium and two small engines in the back. Had plenty of fun building these

One of the NU.Face Heirloom Collection’s main features is Heiress Erin Salston. Erin has been everywhere lately and she is unstoppable! I have to say this is the best time to be a doll collector, specifically an Integrity Toys doll collector. With Jessy Ayala onboard this is a new era for the toy company. Integrity Toys really kicked it up a few notches with their offerings in the last season. Not only the designs have been spectacular but the quality has improved as well. Each of the dolls I have received lately has been flawless in the face paint department. There was a time where I would go through multiple copies of a doll just to find the perfect face. Not this time. With FR’s La Femme and NU.Face’s Heirloom each of the dolls I have received were perfect. I am definitely shook!

  

The Heirloom Collection is the follow-up to 2016’s Reckless which we can all agree was (with no exaggeration) the best collection not only for NU.Face but for the entire Fashion Royalty brand. It was a collection that was definitely hard to top off as designer Jessy has set the bar so high for himself. Heirloom has taken us to a different route from where NU.Face left off and it stands on its own as a collection. This time the theme was all about turn-of-the-last-century silhouettes with an athletic twist. Heiress’ top is inspired by Mugler Spring 2017 Ready-to-Wear with a bit of a modification as the sleeves of the original design were cocoon-like. The modified cut-out sleeves actually made this top wearable. Mugler has got to be one of my favorite fashion labels today as they’re all about sleek, sexy and sporty bordering into futuristic aesthetic an idea which I think Fashion Royalty should steal for a moment. To balance the look Jessy paired the athletic top with a pleated tulle skirt with an emerald green lame underneath. I wished there was a black wetsuit pant with white piping details somewhere in the collection to mix and match just like in the Mugler runway show.

  

Like with every single doll in the Heirloom Collection, Heiress is loaded with detailed accessories. For a change we have a Victorian inspired lace overlay boots with ribbon laces. The spider ring is also an unexpected touch and of course the must-have accessory here is the real working Vuitton inspired mini trunk which I think is the real star in this look. Her nail polish is similar to Bergdorf Goodman Evening Wear Elyse’s taking inspiration from Jason Wu’s Fall 2011 Ready-to-Wear. They are in dark ruby with gold chrome at the tip of the nails. Erin’s hairstyle is very simple. It is similar to Haute Societe Veronique’s and Fame by Frame Imogen’s razor cut hair. The Talking Drama Adele inspired face design has become Erin 2.0’s best screening yet. It’s refreshing to actually see something new for her since they’ve been using the Lady In Red screening and the problematic Chrome Noir screening for her since the debut of her new face sculpt in 2012. While we see an improvement in the quality of IT’s products one thing remains unresolved and that is the color of the heads not matching well with the color of the body. I think they need to pay closer attention to this issue and find out where the problem is stemming from. A light test I feel needs to be done before and after the dolls are produced. While I do like to find a body with a skin tone that matches well with her head it’s hard for me to do so because I do love the nail polish and it’s perfect for her look. Oh doll collector problems!!!

​Leadenhall Market dates back to the 14th century and is situated in what was the centre of Roman London. Originally a meat, poultry and game market, it now features a variety of vendors as well as commercial shops, restaurants, cafes and pubs.

BUSAN, SOUTH KOREA - MAY 18: Ryu "Keria" Min-seok of T1 poses at the League of Legends - Mid-Season Invitational Rumble Features Day on May 18, 2022 in Busan, South Korea. (Photo by Lee Aiksoon/Riot Games)

Emily Inez Denny, ca. 1890

 

Museum of History and Industry (MOHI), Seattle.

 

There are some features of our surroundings that time can't change. Visitors to Seattle, if they're observant and the clouds lift, will see the same brilliant mountain range to the west as the one in this work painted 132 years ago. They're the Olympic Mountains in what is now Olympic National Park on the - wait for it - Olympic Peninsula in Washington state.

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Short Version

 

The Battle of Seattle is the name given to the day when the Native peoples in the area attacked the newly arrived settlers who took refuge in the blockhouse or on the USS Decatur anchored in Elliott Bay.

 

The warship proceeded to fire shells toward the land. There were only two casualties for the settlers and the exact number of casualties the Native peoples suffered is unknown.

 

The artist, Emily Inez Denny (1853-1919), was a child during the Battle of Seattle and painted this scene many years later, fusing her memories with family tradition.

 

Denny's interpretation emphasized the settlers' vulnerability and fear, and eliminated the Decatur's sailors and Marines, on the one hand, and Native people, on the other.

digitalcollections.lib.washington.edu/digital/collection/...

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Extended Version

 

The Battle of Seattle was a January 26, 1856 attack by Native American tribesmen upon Seattle, Washington.

 

At the time, Seattle was a settlement in the Washington Territory that had recently named itself after Chief Seattle (Sealth), a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish peoples of central Puget Sound.

 

European-American settlers were backed by artillery fire and supported by Marines from the United States Navy sloop-of-war Decatur, anchored in Elliott Bay (Seattle's harbor, then called Duwam-sh Bay).

 

They suffered two fatalities. It is not known if any of the Native American raiders died. The contemporary historian T. S. Phelps wrote that they later "would admit" to 28 dead and 80 wounded. T

 

he battle, part of the multi-year Puget Sound War or Yakima Wars (1855-1858), lasted a single day.

 

The Seattle settlement of the time was located roughly in the area of Seattle's Pioneer Square and its neighborhood. T. S. Phelps's memoir of the time described the settlement as:

 

…on a point, or rather a small peninsula, projecting from the eastern shore, and about two miles (3 km) from the mouth of Duwamish River, debouching at the head of the bay. The northern part of this peninsula is connected with the mainland by a low neck of marshy ground, and about one-sixteenth of a mile from its southeastern extremity a firm, hard sand-pit nearly joined it to the adjacent shore, severed only by a narrow channel through which the surplus waters of an inclosed swamp escaped into the bay. The south and west sides rose abruptly from the beach, forming an embankment from three to fifteen feet high; and proceeding thence northerly, the ground undulated for an eighth of a mile, when it gradually sloped towards the swamp and neck.

 

At the intersection of the latter with the main, and overlooking the water, rose a mound about thirty feet above the level of the bay; and to the eastward through a depression in the hills, and passing the head of the swamp, was a broad Indian trail leading to Lake Duwamish [now Lake Washington], distant two and a half miles.

 

Phelps remarks that the tailings from Henry Yesler's recently erected mill were steadily filling in the marshy land at the north of the head or peninsula where the settlement was located. He described the arrangement of the troops arrayed in defense on the nights before the battle:

 

The divisions… nightly occupied the shore, vigilantly guarding the people as they slept, and resting only when the morning light released them from the apprehended attack.

 

… [They] were distributed along the line of defense in the following order: The fourth, under Lieutenant Dallas, commencing at Southeast Point, extended along the bay shore to the sand-bar, where, meeting with the right of the first division, Lieutenant Drake, the latter continued the line facing the swamp to a point half-way from the bar to a hotel situated midway between the bar and Yesler's place, and there joined the second, under Lieutenant Hughes, whose left, resting on the hotel (see Mother Damnable), completed an unbroken line between the latter and Southeast Point, while the howitzer's crew, Lieutenant Morris, was stationed near Plummer's house, to sweep the bar and to operate wherever circumstances demanded. The third division, Lieutenant Phelps, occupied that portion of the neck lying between the swamp and mound east of Yesler's place, to secure the approaches leading from the lake, and the marines, under Sergeant Carbine, garrisoned the block-house.

 

The divisions, thus stationed, left a gap between the second and third, which the width and impassable nature of the swamp at this place rendered unnecessary to close, thereby enabling a portion of the town to be encompassed which otherwise would have been exposed.

 

The distance between the block-house and Southeast Point, following the sinuosities of the bay and swamp shores, was three-quarters of a mile, to be defended by ninety-six men, eighteen marines, and five officers, leaving Gunner Stocking, Carpenter Miller, Clerks Francis and Ferguson, and fifteen men with Lieutenant Middleton, to guard the ship.[3]

 

Prelude

 

Washington Territory Governor Isaac Ingalls Stevens' ambitious treaty-making during 1854 and 1855 has been held to be the cause of the Puget Sound War.

 

The battle was part of a Native American uprising in resistance to the pressure to cede land for reservations determined by territorial officials.

 

There had been a series of skirmishes in the region over the previous several months, beginning October 28, 1855. There had been fighting between federal troops and natives in southern King, Thurston and Pierce counties. Five days before the attack on Seattle, Governor Stevens had declared a "war of extermination" upon the Indians.

 

The sloop Decatur had been called to Puget Sound both because of the trouble with local natives and to deter frequent raids by an alliance of the northern Haida from the Queen Charlotte Islands and the Tongass group of the Tlingit, from what was then Russian America.

 

Captained by Isaac L. Sterret, the vessel struck an uncharted reef near Bainbridge Island on December 7, 1855, and was heavily damaged. (According to naval custom, the reef was named Decatur Reef.) They limped into Seattle for repairs, which lasted until January 19. Sterret was temporarily taken off active duty December 10, although later returned to active duty. However, on the day of the battle, Decatur was commanded by Guert Gansevoort.

 

Decatur lay at anchor in deep water, in a position from which it had total command of the settlement with 16 shipborne 32-pounders firing fuzed shells. To the defense on land, the ship contributed two nine-pounder cannon and 18 stands of arms.

 

About this time, the raiders were attacking the White River settlers to the southeast. Survivors fled to Seattle. There they joined the fifty or so Seattle settlers. Assisted by marines from the Decatur, they had constructed a blockhouse from lumber originally intended for shipment to San Francisco.

 

Days before the battle (January 21), Territorial Governor Stevens arrived in Seattle aboard U.S.S. Active, and discounted rumors of war.

 

Almost immediately upon his departure, reports from friendly natives warned that the governor had been completely mistaken and that an attack was imminent. These reports have been variously credited to Chief Seattle, his daughter Princess Angeline, or another chief, Sucquardle (known also as "Curley" or "Curly Jim").

 

David Swinson "Doc" Maynard, reputed to have had far more than the usual concern for the natives' rights and well-being, evacuated 434 friendly natives to the west side of Puget Sound (at his own expense and with the assistance of his wife).

 

To some extent, the settlers had organized for their defense as volunteers under a Captain Hewett. However, this company of volunteers had disbanded and re-formed several times over the months leading up to the battle.

 

On the evening of January 22, with Decatur having taken a commanding position, the militia leaders declared that "they would not serve longer while there was a ship in port to protect them". Phelps writes that "a more reckless, undisciplined set of men has seldom been let loose to prey upon any community than these eighty embryo soldiers upon Seattle… after much rough argument about thirty of their number became partially convinced that their individual safety depended upon unity of action under a competent leader, and they finally consented to form a company, provided Mr. Peixotto would consent to serve as captain. That gentleman accepted the honor…"

 

Emily Denny mentions the company as being captained by Hewitt and including William Gilliam as 1st Lieutenant, D.T. Denny as Corporal, and Robert Olliver as Sergeant. Phelps names both Hewitt and Peixotto as captains.

 

Phelps lists the hostile natives as including the "Kliktat" (Klickitat and Spokane), "Palouse" (Palus), Walla-Walla, "Yakami" (Yakama), Kamialk, Nisqually, Puyallup, "Lake" (Duwamish-related, living near Lake Washington), "and other tribes, estimated at six thousand warriors, marshaled under the three generals-in-chief Coquilton, Owhi, and Lushi, assisted by many subordinate chiefs."

 

They had failed to recruit warriors from any of the several tribes or nations from the Olympic Peninsula, nor did they succeed in winning the Snoqualmie over to their cause. Although the Snoqualmie chief Patkanim was strongly opposed to the European-American settlers, he allied with them in this war.

 

Two hostile chiefs—Phelps says Owhi and Lushi (presumably, Leschi), other sources say Owhi and Coquilton—disguised themselves as friendly Indians and reconnoitered the situation the night before the battle.

 

Phelps describes this in some detail: he was the sentry whom they tricked with a plausible story.

 

According to Phelps' account, at least two native chiefs were playing a double game. Curley Jim had been considered friendly enough by the settlers to be allowed to remain within their encampment; conversely, his nephew Yark-eke-e-man had been considered one of the hostile force.

 

According to Phelps, the nephew intended to betray the native attack. Curley Jim left the settlement in the company of his visitors, and they parleyed around midnight at the lodge of a chief named Tecumseh; Yark-eke-e-man and several "chiefs of lesser note" were also present.

 

They set out a plan to kill all of the settlers and U.S. military; Curley requested that his friend Henry Yesler be allowed to live, but accepted being overruled in the matter.

 

They resolved to attack in a few hours, around 2 a.m.; Phelps wrote that that plan would have succeeded, since no defender was planning for a pre-dawn assault. But Yark-eke-e-man convinced the raiders to try a mid-morning attack, using a small decoy force to draw the Decatur's men out of the well-defended areas to do battle on First Hill.

 

There are no reliable estimates of the size of the attacking force. Isaac Stevens (who was not present), wrote to Washington that settlers estimated that 200 to 500 Indians had taken the field against them. Phelps put the number of enemy at 2,000, but (write Crowley and Wilma) "frontier military officers often inflated the number of opposing forces to reinforce their accomplishments (or to minimize their failures)."

 

Community college historian Murray Morgan writes that early "reports seem to have multiplied by ten the actual numbers. There could not have been more than one hundred and fifty."

 

Many settlers resided on scattered claims divided by thick forest, because to establish a land claim, settlers had to live on it. Some settlers doubted that the Indians would attack, and had to run for the blockhouse on the morning of the battle.

 

The first fatality of the engagement was Jack Drew, a deserter from Decatur killed in friendly fire. When he attempted to enter a cabin through a window, he was shot dead by fifteen-year-old Milton Holgate.

 

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.

 

Because the natives' only common language was Chinook jargon, a trade language that many of the white settlers also spoke, the settlers were able to hear and understand the attackers' shouted orders "and revealed many incidents of the battle they were anxious to conceal."

 

An Indian known as "Jim", a relative of Curley's who died a few months later in a hunting accident, evaded Curley's vigilance and warned Dr. Williamson of the impending attack.

 

Williamson sent a messenger to Yesler, who informed Gansevoort, and Decatur's troops abandoned their breakfast and returned to the positions they had held by night. 52 women and children found refuge on board Decatur, and others on board the barque Brontes. The non-combatants of the friendly tribes took to their canoes to get out of the way.

 

Curley's sister (and Yark-eke-e-man's mother) Li-cu-mu-low ("Nancy"), whom Phelps describes as "short, stout, and incapable of running," warned as she headed for her canoe that the Kliktat were gathered around Tom Pepper's house, which was in the forest, near the crest of First Hill.

 

Decatur fired off a howitzer shell in that direction, the first shot of the battle. Phelps and a few others had been trying unsuccessfully to rouse the volunteers from their torpor. At the sound of the howitzer shell, they rushed as one for the blockhouse. There "Sergeant Carbine several times charged them out of one door, to return as often by the other, till, wearying of the trouble, he left them to cower behind the wooden bulwarks, protected from the bullets of the foe."

 

The third division, contrary to orders, charged up the trail that led towards the lake. This charge met with success, as they pushed the attackers back without taking any casualties themselves. Klakum held a position behind a tree, and shot at Peixotto standing on the block-house steps, but missed and killed a boy, Milton G. Holgate, who was standing a few steps higher. It was the second death of a European American caused by another white.

 

On the south end, settlers on the peninsula faced off against natives on the mainland with a slough dividing them. Phelps describes "the incessant rattle of small-arms, and an uninterrupted whistling of bullets, mingled with the furious yells of the Indians," but there were few casualties.

 

A settler was killed when he ducked from behind a stump to get some drinking water;Clarence Bagley, quoting William Bell two days after the event, says the casualty was Christian White; Phelps, writing 17 years later, says it was Robert Wilson.

 

Hans Carl, an invalided sailor on Decatur, died shortly thereafter, but for reasons unrelated to the battle.

 

Aftermath

 

News of the attack spread rapidly. By 4 p.m. it was known in Bellingham. At noon the day after the battle, Active steamed into Elliott Bay, Governor Stevens aboard. Stevens was, in Phelps's words, "at last compelled to acknowledge the presence of hostile Indians in the Territory." Active headed south in the direction of Steilacoom, which seemed the most likely next target of an attack, dropping the governor at Olympia, the capital, on the way.

 

Yark-eke-e-man reported that the hostile chiefs were ill-provisioned. Confident of victory, they expected to provision themselves from the settlers' supplies. They spent the next several weeks scouring the land for food.

 

Two days after the battle, Coquilton threatened, through a messenger, "that within one moon he would return with twenty thousand warriors, and, attacking by land and water, destroy the place in spite of all the war-ship could do to prevent."

 

The threat was taken seriously, and leaders decided to improve Seattle's defenses. Henry Yesler volunteered ship's cargo of house lumber, and on February 1 Decatur's divisions began a two-week project to erect a defensive palisade: two fences five feet high, placed eighteen inches apart, and filled in with well-tamped earth, 1,200 yards (1,100 m) long, and enclosing a large portion of the town.

 

A second block-house was also erected, and an old ship's cannon, plus a 6-pounder field-piece borrowed from Active, were to serve as its artillery.

 

Trees and undergrowth were removed (variously attacked with levers, axes, and shovels, or burned in place) to provide an esplanade and enable Decatur's howitzer to sweep the shores.

 

Much brush was also cleared from the town's inland edges, to reduce the cover for future attacks. On February 24, USS Massachusetts arrived and on March 28 USS John Hancock.

 

The fortified town did not have to face a second battle. Defeat in the Battle of Seattle had discouraged the hostile natives, and they did not again amass a comparable force.

 

Furthermore, Governor Stevens had convinced Patkanim and his men to take on the role of bounty hunters, paying them handsomely for collecting the scalps of leaders of the hostile tribes.

 

Morgan does not describe the battle as a victory for the Americans.

 

Rather, he writes that "both sides were dismayed, the whites by the realization that the enemy really would attack a town, the Indians by their first experience with exploding shells rather than cannonballs."

 

Also by Stevens's order, a court-martial was convened at Seattle on May 15 for the trial of Klakum and twenty other Indians. The military officers acquitted them, deeming their actions as having been legitimate warfare against recognized combatants, not criminal acts. They were released after a declaration of peace. It was certainly not the end of violence between settlers and natives in the region, but it was the end of outright war.

 

Nine days after the battle, Chief Leschi and Chief Kitsap, along with a group of 17 Indians, appeared at the home of John McLeod near the Nisqually River.

 

McLeod was a former employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, had a Nisqually wife, and was trusted by the hostile Indians.

 

Leschi said that neither he nor his band had taken part in the attack on Seattle, and he thought the attack had been foolish. Leschi asked for John Swan, another trusted white man, to visit Leschi's camp on the Green River for a peace conference.[9] When Swan did visit Leschi's camp a few days later, he counted about 150 warriors, or men of fighting age. Nearly all were from west of the Cascades, with only 10–20 from the east.

 

Casualties

 

Jack Drew, a deserter from the Decatur, was shot and killed by young Milton Holgate, a settler's son, when he tried to enter the latter's cabin.

 

Holgate was killed by friendly fire, and another settler died in the battle: Christian White or Robert Wilson (see above). One sailor, Hans Carl, died later of causes unrelated to the battle.

 

Phelps characterizes the low casualties as "incredible" and "miraculous", given that "one hundred and sixty men were for seven hours exposed to an almost uninterrupted storm of bullets".

 

The casualties on the native side are unknown. Phelps claimed personally to have seen ten men die from one shell. He said that the natives later admitted to 28 dead and 80 wounded, but said that the native women "secret[ed] the dead beyond all chance of discovery." No Indian bodies were found on the battlefield.

 

According to Seattle lore, decades after the battle, Seattle's future fire chief Gardner Kellogg was excavating his house and found a shell from Decatur that had buried itself without exploding.

 

He stuck it under a stump that he was trying to burn out and went off to lunch. Dexter Horton stopped by to warm the seat of his pants at the fire, and as it exploded, nearly became the last casualty of the battle of Seattle.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Seattle_(1856)

 

Support at ideas.lego.com/projects/5995b5f7-6955-4a57-9315-9f78f9410f80

Note the accumulation of iron (redox feature) and areas of reduction (gray color) from the lower subsoil of an Augusta soil.

 

For a detailed description of the soil, visit:

soilseries.sc.egov.usda.gov/OSD_Docs/A/AUGUSTA.html

 

Redoximorphic features (RMFs) consist of color patterns in a soil that are caused by loss (depletion) or gain (concentration) of pigment compared to the matrix color, formed by oxidation/reduction of iron and/or manganese coupled with their removal, translocation, or accrual.

 

For more information about describing and sampling soils, visit:

www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/field...

or Chapter 3 of the Soil Survey manual:

www.nrcs.usda.gov/sites/default/files/2022-09/The-Soil-Su...

 

For additional information on "How to Use the Field Book for Describing and Sampling Soils" (video reference), visit:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_hQaXV7MpM

 

For additional information about soil classification using USDA-NRCS Soil Taxonomy, visit:

www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/keys-...

or;

www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/soil-...

 

For more information about Hydric Soils and their Field Indicators, visit:

www.nrcs.usda.gov/resources/guides-and-instructions/field...

 

One of the main features of the May 1978 timetable change was the improved Birmingham suburban services introduced by the West Midlands Passenger Transport Executive. The main focus was on the new through services from Litchfield/Four Oaks to Redditch, however there were also improvements to services into Moor Street. These improvements required significant infrastructure alterations and on the weekend 22/23rd April 1978 I was one of four Nottingham Division S & T Engineers loaned to the Birmingham Division to assist in the testing and commissioning of the signalling alterations. We were allocated to works associated with the improvements to services into Moor Street and during a short lull on the Sunday I was able to put my feet up for half an hour or so and have a cup of tea in Bentley Heath Crossing Signal Box.

 

The box was built by the Great Western Railway as part of the quadrupling of the Birmingham Main line between Olton and Lapworth, which was completed in May 1933. The new signal box was opened in 1932. This type 28b signal box design had been introduced at the turn of the century and over a hundred were constructed by the Great Western Railway, however only a few were built after 1924. The design had several distinctive features; including horizontal boarding, three up and two down sliding windows, a gabled roof with no finals and a plain gabled end. The box was fitted with a 49 lever Great Western Railway vertical tappet, three bar mechanical frame. The box was reduced to a crossing box when Saltley Power Signal Box was commissioned in 1968 and finally closed and was demolished in February 2008.

 

Praktica LTL, Ektachrome 200

 

Among the many and varied features of California’s Death Valley are sand dunes. One especially picturesque location is the Mesquite Sand Dunes, near the settlement of Stovepipe Wells. It is an area where blowing winds are arrested by mountains in their path. The sands they carry are dropped and continue to be corralled by the winds, leading to this massive “sand box” without physical bounds or borders. As seen in this set of four views, the pale sands glow in the sunrise, the colors and shadows ever changing as the sun breaks first light and continues to rise. While the dunes are hot, dry, and austere, they are home to a rich ecosystem of shrubs and largely nocturnal fauna. At sunrise, all that can be seen of the animals are the tracks they have left as they retreated back to their shelters within the sands and shrubs. The only fauna still readily seen at those early morning hours are the shutterbugs.

 

mesquite sand dunes sunrise #2 _ death valley _ (© 2014 megart)

 

Companion files:

mesquite sand dunes sunrise #1 _ death valley _ (© 2014 megart)

mesquite sand dunes sunrise #2 _ death valley _ (© 2014 megart)

mesquite sand dunes sunrise #3 _ death valley _ (© 2014 megart)

mesquite sand dunes sunrise #4 _ death valley _ (© 2014 megart)

 

Features and Funcions:

- Engines Rotate for Vertical Landing

- Turret can Rotate 180 Degrees

- Turret is Accessible from the Command Deck

- Finished Interiors

- Rotating Side Mounted Guns

- Foldable Landing Gear

- Loading Ramp

- Jump Seats for Four Man SWAT Team

- Easy Access to Lower Level (Command Deck Floor Folds and Lifts Out)

- Two Prisoner Cells

- Pilot and Navigator Chairs

 

Credits:

Side-Mounted Turrets: Legohaulic

Command Chairs: Legodrome

Rear Exhaust Grilles: Larry Lars

My latest creation features some Indian paisley print cotton taken from a multi-panel skirt and a paisley silk tie top. I thought about using the same material for the top but it is quite an open fabric, which gives it a lovely transparency, but it doesn't handle so well with a fitted design. My next thought was to use a plain silk fabric as I did with the Chrysalis dress but then I had a look through my stash of silk ties and found this tiny paisley. I really like the fact that both fabrics are paisley but on a very different scale so they combine especially well. Silk is much tougher at withstanding intense shaping and moulding for the top. Finally for the tiny straps I created a crochet chain and threaded it into the top securing it with invisible nylon thread and passed some tiny amber beads onto each end of each strap as a little embellishment.

 

Rayna Eye Candy is the third of my Raynas to feature in my 'Rayna Retrospective'. One more to go before Wild Feeling arrives!

Features from left to right include Coe and Ladd Glaciers, Pulpit Rock, Cathedral Ridge, Queens Chair, Sandy Glacier Headwall, and Yocum Ridge.

One of the most delightful tourist attractions along the Geelong's Waterfront Esplanade is the beautifully restored 1892 portable steam driven, hand-carved wooden carousel.

 

Constructed around 1892, the Armitage-Herschell portable steam driven, hand-carved wooden carousel one of only 200 in operation around the world. It features thirty six Charles Dare horses (twenty-four of which are original) and two dragon chariots (both faithful replicas). The horses still have their original real horse hair tails! There are forty eight original artworks adorning the carousel's boards, inspired by the legend of King Arthur. Each painting has a Holy Grail, and the artist's initials JMC hidden within it.

 

The carousel can be traced back to the Mordialloc Pier where it operated after the Great War through until the 1950s. It was purchased by the Steampacket Place Development Board in 1996 and painstakingly restored. Each horse alone took over three hundred hours to restore as forty layers of paint were stripped back to reveal the brilliant original colours. All in all the restoration took three years and cost thirty million dollars to achieve. The time, effort and money has been well invested I think, as you cannot help but smile when you see the carousel in action; with or without playful children on board.

 

The Allan Herschell Company Incorporated was established in 1873 as a general engineering shop. Later it became the North Tonawanda Engine and Machine Company. In 1876 the name of the company was changed to the Armitage-Herschell Company. The first carousel built by the company was in 1883. By 1891 over one hundred carousels had been manufactured. Despite the commercial success, poor investments saw the company placed in receivership in 1899. Consequently, Allan Herschell and his brother-in-law, Edward Spillman, bought the ailing company and formed a new firm called the Herschell-Spillman Company. They went on to become the largest carousel manufactures in America.

 

It is believed that the horses were hand-carved by the American master carver, Charles Dare, which makes them very rare.

 

I spent a delightful, if rainy, Saturday with the Famous Flickr Five+ Group along the Geelong Waterfront where we walked from central Geelong Esplanade to the Art Deco Eastern Beach.

 

Geelong is a city southwest of Melbourne, Australia. Lining its bay, The Waterfront Esplanade has a Nineteenth Century American carousel, a curved art deco boardwalk and sea bath at Eastern Beach, and scattered along the waterfront are more than one hundred bollards painted as colourful sculptures chronicling city history by artist Jan Mitchell. The Geelong Botanic Gardens lie at the eastern end of the bay. The central National Wool Museum hosts changing exhibitions, concerts and entertainments.

Explanation: A dramatic study in contrasts, this colorful skyscape features stars, dust, and glowing gas in NGC 6914. The complex of nebulae lies some 6,000 light-years away, toward the high-flying northern constellation Cygnus and the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. With foreground dust clouds in silhouette, both reddish hydrogen emission nebulae and dusty blue reflection nebulae fill the 1/2 degree wide field. The view spans nearly 50 light-years at the estimated distance of NGC 6914. Ultraviolet radiation from the massive, hot, young stars of the extensive Cygnus OB2 association ionize the region's atomic hydrogen gas, producing the characteristic red glow as protons and electrons recombine. Embedded Cygnus OB2 stars also provide the blue starlight strongly reflected by the dusty clouds. (text apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110304.html )

 

This picture was photographed on June, 29 and July 5-7, 2013 in the Crimea during the festival of amateur astronomy, "Southern Nights 2013" (height of 600 m. above sea level)

 

Equipment: home assembled reflector 10" f/3.8, mount WhiteSwan-180, camera QSI-583wsg, Tevevue Paracorr-2. Off-axis guidecamera SX Lodestar.

LRGB filter set Baader Planetarium.

L: 37x600 sec., bin.1, Ha= 7*1800 sec. bin1. RGB: 17*450-600 sec. each filter, bin.2.

16,75 hours total.

FWHM 2.16"-2.69" , sum in L channel - 2.46"

Processed Pixinsight 1.8, Fitstacker and Photoshop CS6.

The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, features signs from old casinos and other businesses displayed outdoors on 2.27 acres (0.92 ha). Efforts to establish a neon sign museum were underway in the late 1980s, but stalled due to a lack of resources. On September 18, 1996, the Las Vegas City Council voted to fund such a project, to be known as the Neon Museum. The organization started out by re-installing old signage in downtown Las Vegas, to attract more visitors to the area.

 

Young Electric Sign Company (YESCO) had manufactured many neon signs in the city, and the company had a storage site for old signs which would eventually become part of the Neon Museum collection. In 2000, as YESCO prepared to close its storage lot, the city provided the museum with land to start its own. Tours of the new site, known as the Neon Boneyard, began in 2001, by appointment only.

 

The lobby of the former La Concha Motel, located on the Las Vegas Strip, was donated to the museum and moved there in 2006, eventually becoming its visitor center. Construction to convert the lobby began in May 2011, and the museum officially opened to the general public on October 27, 2012, eliminating the appointment system.

 

The Neon Museum's collection includes more than 200 signs. An expansion of the museum site began in 2017, although hundreds of neon artifacts still remained in off-site storage due to space limitations. In 2024, the museum announced plans to relocate to two larger, nearby sites at 18b The Las Vegas Arts District. The project will include relocation of the La Concha lobby, and the museum is expected to open in the new locations around 2027.

 

(Source: Wikipedia)

Features all the modern automotive hijinks - angry front design, some fake curves here and there, a rear light panel, random obligatory shiny bits, copious amounts of plastic and matte paint of the most dull colour found in the swatch.

Cave features at Mammoth Caves.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn9oxb052bI

 

Features working brakes!...yeah I know there is not really any point, but I could so I did :) 2x 9v motors wheel-spin behind this when the brakes are clicked "on"

Also has a lightbrick in the firebox, actuated by pushing the main boiler slightly backwards. This light also serves as a "through" light to the rear tail lamp. Plus a "quick release" cab to be able to access the click hinge brake lever.

Had to sit on this for 8 months or so, but now able to show some of the pictures as "teasers".....designed and made exclusively for "The Lego Adventure" book: www.flickr.com/groups/2021445@N23/ which includes a full 18 page feature on how to build this, starting from chassis to end result.

Was an honour and a privilige to be chosen for this line up of "inspirational" builders throughout the world :)

Inamorata Tumaini features the young and adorably grumpy Akech sculpt in Chocolate resin and M bust 4.0 athletic body. Her custom hard cap wig is needle felted mohair wool over poseable copper frame. The inspiration of her fashion was a African quilted dress, but miniaturise it we went for a printed quilt pattern instead (miniature quilting seams would be quite stiff and bulky). To make the traditional look more young and trendy, I reinterpreted the empire waist dress as a crop top and skirt.

 

* Commissioned art doll and not for sale.

The features in Yosemite Valley are made of granitic rock emplaced as plutons miles deep during the late Cretaceous. Over time the Sierra Nevada was uplifted, exposing this rock to erosion at the surface.

 

The oldest of these granitic rocks, at 114 million years, occur along the Merced River Gorge west of the valley. The El Capitan pluton intruded the valley, forming most of the granitic rock that makes up much of the central part of the valley, including Cathedral Rocks, Three Brothers, and El Capitan. The youngest Yosemite Valley pluton is the 87-million-year-old Half Dome granodiorite, which makes up most of the rock at Glacier Point, the Royal Arches, and its namesake, Half Dome. (Wikipedia)

Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 miles (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.

 

The park consists of 310.31 square kilometres (76,680 acres; 119.81 sq mi; 31,031 ha) of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is 5,653 feet (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is 4,085 feet (1,245 m) at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than 10 inches (250 mm) of rain annually.

 

Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was re designated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.6 million visitors in 2018.

 

As stated in the foundation document in U.S. National Park Service website:

 

The purpose of Arches National Park is to protect extraordinary examples of geologic features including arches, natural bridges, windows, spires, and balanced rocks, as well as other features of geologic, historic, and scientific interest, and to provide opportunities to experience these resources and their associated values in their majestic natural settings.

 

The national park lies above an underground evaporite layer or salt bed, which is the main cause of the formation of the arches, spires, balanced rocks, sandstone fins, and eroded monoliths in the area. This salt bed is thousands of feet thick in places and was deposited in the Paradox Basin of the Colorado Plateau some 300 million years ago (Mya) when a sea flowed into the region and eventually evaporated. Over millions of years, the salt bed was covered with debris eroded from the Uncompahgre Uplift to the northeast. During the Early Jurassic (about 200 Mya), desert conditions prevailed in the region and the vast Navajo Sandstone was deposited. An additional sequence of stream laid and windblown sediments, the Entrada Sandstone (about 140 Mya), was deposited on top of the Navajo. Over 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of younger sediments were deposited and have been mostly eroded. Remnants of the cover exist in the area including exposures of the Cretaceous Mancos Shale. The arches of the area are developed mostly within the Entrada formation.

 

The weight of this cover caused the salt bed below it to liquefy and thrust up layers of rock into salt domes. The evaporites of the area formed more unusual "salt anticlines" or linear regions of uplift. Faulting occurred and whole sections of rock subsided into the areas between the domes. In some places, they turned almost on edge. The result of one such 2,500-foot (760 m) displacement, the Moab Fault, is seen from the visitor center.

 

As this subsurface movement of salt shaped the landscape, erosion removed the younger rock layers from the surface. Except for isolated remnants, the major formations visible in the park today are the salmon-colored Entrada Sandstone, in which most of the arches form, and the buff-colored Navajo Sandstone. These are visible in layer-cake fashion throughout most of the park. Over time, water seeped into the surface cracks, joints, and folds of these layers. Ice formed in the fissures, expanding and putting pressure on surrounding rock, breaking off bits and pieces. Winds later cleaned out the loose particles. A series of free-standing fins remained. Wind and water attacked these fins until, in some, the cementing material gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many damaged fins collapsed. Others, with the right degree of hardness and balance, survived despite their missing sections. These became the famous arches.

 

Although the park's terrain may appear rugged and durable, it is extremely fragile. More than 1 million visitors each year threaten the fragile high-desert ecosystem. The problem lies within the soil's crust, which is composed of cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, and lichens that grow in the dusty parts of the park. Factors that make Arches National Park sensitive to visitor damage include being a semiarid region, the scarce, unpredictable rainfall, lack of deep freezing, and lack of plant litter, which results in soils that have both a low resistance to and slow recovery from, compressional forces such as foot traffic. Methods of indicating effects on the soil are cytophobic soil crust index, measuring of water infiltration, and t-tests that are used to compare the values from the undisturbed and disturbed areas.

 

Geological processes that occurred over 300 million years ago caused a salt bed to be deposited, which today lies beneath the landscape of Arches National Park.[ Over time, the salt bed was covered with sediments that eventually compressed into rock layers that have since been named Entrada Standstone. Rock layers surrounding the edge of the salt bed continued to erode and shift into vertical sandstone walls called fins. Sand collected between vertical walls of the fins, then slightly acidic rain combined with carbon dioxide in the air allowed for the chemical formation of carbonic acid within the trapped sand. Over time, the carbonic acid dissolved the calcium carbonate that held the sandstone together. Many of the rock formations have weaker layers of rock on bottom that are holding stronger layers on top. The weaker layers would dissolve first, creating openings in the rock. Gravity caused pieces of the stronger rock layer to fall piece by piece into an arch shape. Arches form within rock fins at points of intense fracturing localization, or weak points in the rock's formation, caused by horizontal and vertical discontinuities. Lastly, water, wind, and time continued this erosion process and ultimately created the arches of Arches National Park. All of the arches in the park are made of Entrada Sandstone, however, there are slight differences in how each arch was developed. This allows the Entrada Sandstone to be categories into 3 groups including Slick rock members, Dewey rock members, and Moab members. Vertical arches can be developed from Slick rock members, a combination of Slick rock members and Moab members, or Slick rock members resting above Dewey rock members. Horizontal arches (also called potholes) are formed when a vertical pothole formation meets a horizontal cave, causing a union into a long arch structure. The erosion process within Arches National Park will continue as time continues to pass. Continued erosion combined with vertical and horizontal stress will eventually cause arches to collapse, but still, new arches will continue to form for thousands of years.

 

Humans have occupied the region since the last ice age 10,000 years ago. Fremont people and Ancestral Puebloans lived in the area until about 700 years ago. Spanish missionaries encountered Ute and Paiute tribes in the area when they first came through in 1775, but the first European-Americans to attempt settlement in the area were the Mormon Elk Mountain Mission in 1855, who soon abandoned the area. Ranchers, farmers, and prospectors later settled Moab in the neighboring Riverine Valley in the late 1870s. Word of the beauty of the surrounding rock formations spread beyond the settlement as a possible tourist destination.

 

The Arches area was first brought to the attention of the National Park Service by Frank A. Wadleigh, passenger traffic manager of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Wadleigh, accompanied by railroad photographer George L. Beam, visited the area in September 1923 at the invitation of Alexander Ringhoffer, a Hungarian-born prospector living in Salt Valley. Ringhoffer had written to the railroad to interest them in the tourist potential of a scenic area he had discovered the previous year with his two sons and a son-in-law, which he called the Devils Garden (known today as the Klondike Bluffs). Wadleigh was impressed by what Ringhoffer showed him, and suggested to Park Service director Stephen T. Mather that the area be made a national monument.

 

The following year, additional support for the monument idea came from Laurence Gould, a University of Michigan graduate student (and future polar explorer) studying the geology of the nearby La Sal Mountains, who was shown the scenic area by local physician Dr. J. W. "Doc" Williams.

 

A succession of government investigators examined the area, in part due to confusion as to the precise location. In the process, the name Devils Garden was transposed to an area on the opposite side of Salt Valley that includes Landscape Arch, the longest arch in the park. Ringhoffer's original discovery was omitted, while another area nearby, known locally as the Windows, was included. Designation of the area as a national monument was supported by the Park Service in 1926 but was resisted by President Calvin Coolidge's Interior Secretary, Hubert Work. Finally, in April 1929, shortly after his inauguration, President Herbert Hoover signed a presidential proclamation creating the Arches National Monument, consisting of two comparatively small, disconnected sections. The purpose of the reservation under the 1906 Antiquities Act was to protect the arches, spires, balanced rocks, and other sandstone formations for their scientific and educational value. The name Arches was suggested by Frank Pinkely, superintendent of the Park Service's southwestern national monuments, following a visit to the Windows section in 1925.

 

In late 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that enlarged the Arches to protect additional scenic features and permit the development of facilities to promote tourism. A small adjustment was made by President Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 to accommodate a new road alignment.

 

In early 1969, just before leaving office, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed a proclamation substantially enlarging the Arches. Two years later, President Richard Nixon signed legislation enacted by Congress, which significantly reduced the total area enclosed, but changed its status. Arches National Park was formally dedicated in May 1972.

 

In 1980, vandals attempted to use an abrasive kitchen cleanser to deface ancient petroglyphs in the park, prompting park officials to recruit physicist John F. Asmus, who specialized in using lasers to restore works of art, to use his technology to repair the damage. Asmus "zapped the panel with intense light pulses and succeeded in removing most of the cleanser".

 

Climbing Balanced Rock or any named or unnamed arch in Arches National Park with an opening larger than 3 ft (0.9 m) is banned by park regulations. Climbing on other features in the park is allowed but regulated; in addition, slacklining and BASE jumping are banned parkwide.

 

Climbing on named arches within the park had long been banned by park regulations, but following Dean Potter's successful free climb on Delicate Arch in May 2006, the wording of the regulations was deemed unenforceable by the park attorney. In response, the park revised its regulations later that month, eventually imposing the current ban on arch climbing in 2014.

 

Approved recreational activities include auto touring, hiking, bicycling, camping at the Devils Garden campground, backpacking, canyoneering, and rock climbing, with permits required for the last three activities. Guided commercial tours and ranger programs are also available.

 

Astronomy is also popular in the park due to its dark skies, despite the increasing light pollution from towns such as Moab.

 

Delicate Arch is the subject of the third 2014 quarter of the U.S. Mint's America the Beautiful Quarters program commemorating national parks and historic sites. The Arches quarter had the highest production of the five 2014 national park quarters, with more than 465 million minted.

 

American writer Edward Abbey was a park ranger at Arches National Monument in 1956 and 1957, where he kept journals that became his book Desert Solitaire. The success of Abbey's book, as well as interest in adventure travel, has drawn many hikers, mountain bikers, and off-pavement driving enthusiasts to the area. Permitted activities within the park include camping, hiking along designated trails, backpacking, canyoneering, rock climbing, bicycling, and driving along existing roads, both paved and unpaved. The Hayduke Trail, an 812 mi (1,307 km) backpacking route named after one of Edward Abbey's characters, begins in the park.

 

An abundance of wildlife occurs in Arches National Park, including spadefoot toads, antelope squirrels, scrub jays, peregrine falcons, many kinds of sparrows, red foxes, desert bighorn sheep, kangaroo rats, mule deers, cougars, midget faded rattlesnakes, yucca moths, western rattlesnakes, and collared lizards.

 

A number of plant species are common in the park, including prickly pear cactus, Indian ricegrass, bunch grasses, cheatgrass, moss, liverworts, Utah juniper, Mormon tea, blackbrush, cliffrose, four-winged saltbrush, pinyon pine, evening primrose, sand verbena, yucca, and sacred datura.

 

Biological soil crust consisting of cyanobacteria, lichen, mosses, green algae, and microfungi is found throughout southeastern Utah. The fibrous growths help keep soil particles together, creating a layer that is more resistant to erosion. The living soil layer readily absorbs and stores water, allowing more complex forms of plant life to grow in places with low precipitation levels.

 

Among the notable features of the park are the following:

Balanced Rock – a large balancing rock, the size of three school buses

Courthouse Towers – a collection of tall stone columns

Dark Angel – a free-standing 150 ft-tall (46 m) sandstone pillar at the end of the Devils Garden Trail

Delicate Arch – a lone-standing arch that has become a symbol of Utah and the most recognized arch in the park

Devils Garden – many arches and columns scattered along a ridge

Double Arch – two arches that share a common end

Fiery Furnace – an area of maze-like narrow passages and tall rock columns (see biblical reference, Book of Daniel, chapter 3)

Landscape Arch – a very thin and long arch in the Devils Garden with a span of 290 ft (88 m) (the longest arch in the park)

Petrified Dunes – petrified remnants of dunes blown from the ancient lakes that covered the area

The Phallus – a rock spire that resembles a phallus

Wall Arch – located along the popular Devils Garden Trail; collapsed sometime on August 4/5, 2008

The Three Gossips –a mid-sized sandstone tower located in the Courthouse Towers area.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

Wells Cathedral is an Anglican cathedral in Wells, Somerset, England, dedicated to St Andrew the Apostle. It is the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells, whose cathedra it holds as mother church of the Diocese of Bath and Wells. Built as a Roman Catholic cathedral from around 1175 to replace an earlier church on the site since 705, it became an Anglican cathedral when King Henry VIII split from Rome. It is moderately sized for an English cathedral. Its broad west front and large central tower are dominant features. It has been called "unquestionably one of the most beautiful" and "most poetic" of English cathedrals.

 

Its Gothic architecture is mostly inspired from Early English style of the late 12th to early 13th centuries, lacking the Romanesque work that survives in many other cathedrals. Building began about 1175 at the east end with the choir. Historian John Harvey sees it as Europe's first truly Gothic structure, breaking the last constraints of Romanesque. The stonework of its pointed arcades and fluted piers bears pronounced mouldings and carved capitals in a foliate, "stiff-leaf" style. Its Early English front with 300 sculpted figures is seen as a "supreme triumph of the combined plastic arts in England". The east end retains much ancient stained glass. Unlike many cathedrals of monastic foundation, Wells has many surviving secular buildings linked to its chapter of secular canons, including the Bishop's Palace and the 15th-century residential Vicars' Close It is a Grade I listed building.

 

The earliest remains of a building on the site are of a late-Roman mausoleum, identified during excavations in 1980. An abbey church was built in Wells in 705 by Aldhelm, first bishop of the newly established Diocese of Sherborne during the reign of King Ine of Wessex. It was dedicated to St Andrew and stood at the site of the cathedral's cloisters, where some excavated remains can be seen. The font in the cathedral's south transept is from this church and is the oldest part of the present building. In 766 Cynewulf, King of Wessex, signed a charter endowing the church with eleven hides of land. In 909 the seat of the diocese was moved from Sherborne to Wells.

 

The first bishop of Wells was Athelm (909), who crowned King Æthelstan. Athelm and his nephew Dunstan both became Archbishops of Canterbury. During this period a choir of boys was established to sing the liturgy. Wells Cathedral School, which was established to educate these choirboys, dates its foundation to this point. There is, however, some controversy over this. Following the Norman Conquest, John de Villula moved the seat of the bishop from Wells to Bath in 1090. The church at Wells, no longer a cathedral, had a college of secular clergy.

 

The cathedral is thought to have been conceived and commenced in about 1175 by Reginald Fitz Jocelin, who died in 1191. Although it is clear from its size that from the outset, the church was planned to be the cathedral of the diocese, the seat of the bishop moved between Wells and the abbeys of Glastonbury and Bath, before settling at Wells. In 1197 Reginald's successor, Savaric FitzGeldewin, with the approval of Pope Celestine III, officially moved his seat to Glastonbury Abbey. The title of Bishop of Bath and Glastonbury was used until the Glastonbury claim was abandoned in 1219.

 

Savaric's successor, Jocelin of Wells, again moved the bishop's seat to Bath Abbey, with the title Bishop of Bath. Jocelin was a brother of Hugh (II) of Lincoln and was present at the signing of the Magna Carta. Jocelin continued the building campaign begun by Reginald and was responsible for the Bishop's Palace, the choristers' school, a grammar school, a hospital for travellers and a chapel. He also had a manor house built at Wookey, near Wells. Jocelin saw the church dedicated in 1239 but, despite much lobbying of the Pope by Jocelin's representatives in Rome, did not live to see cathedral status granted. The delay may have been a result of inaction by Pandulf Verraccio, a Roman ecclesiastical politician, papal legate to England and Bishop of Norwich, who was asked by the Pope to investigate the situation but did not respond. Jocelin died at Wells on 19 November 1242 and was buried in the choir of the cathedral; the memorial brass on his tomb is one of the earliest brasses in England. Following his death the monks of Bath unsuccessfully attempted to regain authority over Wells.

 

In 1245 the ongoing dispute over the title of the bishop was resolved by a ruling of Pope Innocent IV, who established the title as the "Bishop of Bath and Wells", which it has remained until this day, with Wells as the principal seat of the bishop. Since the 11th century the church has had a chapter of secular clergy, like the cathedrals of Chichester, Hereford, Lincoln and York. The chapter was endowed with 22 prebends (lands from which finance was drawn) and a provost to manage them. On acquiring cathedral status, in common with other such cathedrals, it had four chief clergy, the dean, precentor, chancellor and sacristan, who were responsible for the spiritual and material care of the cathedral.

 

The building programme, begun by Reginald Fitz Jocelin, Bishop in the 12th century, continued under Jocelin of Wells, who was a canon from 1200, then bishop from 1206. Adam Locke was master mason from about 1192 until 1230. It was designed in the new style with pointed arches, later known as Gothic, which was introduced at about the same time at Canterbury Cathedral. Work was halted between 1209 and 1213 when King John was excommunicated and Jocelin was in exile, but the main parts of the church were complete by the time of the dedication by Jocelin in 1239.

 

By the time the cathedral, including the chapter house, was finished in 1306, it was already too small for the developing liturgy, and unable to accommodate increasingly grand processions of clergy. John Droxford initiated another phase of building under master mason Thomas of Whitney, during which the central tower was heightened and an eight-sided Lady chapel was added at the east end by 1326. Ralph of Shrewsbury followed, continuing the eastward extension of the choir and retrochoir beyond. He oversaw the building of Vicars' Close and the Vicars' Hall, to give the men who were employed to sing in the choir a secure place to live and dine, away from the town and its temptations. He had an uneasy relationship with the citizens of Wells, partly because of his imposition of taxes, and he surrounded his palace with crenellated walls, a moat and a drawbridge.

 

John Harewell raised money for the completion of the west front by William Wynford, who was appointed as master mason in 1365. One of the foremost master masons of his time, Wynford worked for the king at Windsor, Winchester Cathedral and New College, Oxford. At Wells, he designed the western towers of which north-west was not built until the following century. In the 14th century, the central piers of the crossing were found to be sinking under the weight of the crossing tower which had been damaged by an earthquake in the previous century. Strainer arches, sometimes described as scissor arches, were inserted by master mason William Joy to brace and stabilise the piers as a unit.

 

By the reign of Henry VII the cathedral was complete, appearing much as it does today (though the fittings have changed). From 1508 to 1546, the eminent Italian humanist scholar Polydore Vergil was active as the chapter's representative in London. He donated a set of hangings for the choir of the cathedral. While Wells survived the Dissolution of the Monasteries better than the cathedrals of monastic foundation, the abolition of chantries in 1547 resulted in a reduction in its income. Medieval brasses were sold, and a pulpit was placed in the nave for the first time. Between 1551 and 1568, in two periods as dean, William Turner established a herb garden, which was recreated between 2003 and 2010.

 

Elizabeth I gave the chapter and the Vicars Choral a new charter in 1591, creating a new governing body, consisting of a dean and eight residentiary canons with control over the church estates and authority over its affairs, but no longer entitled to elect the dean (that entitlement thenceforward belonged ultimately to the Crown). The stability brought by the new charter ended with the onset of the Civil War and the execution of Charles I. Local fighting damaged the cathedral's stonework, furniture and windows. The dean, Walter Raleigh, a nephew of the explorer Walter Raleigh, was placed under house arrest after the fall of Bridgwater to the Parliamentarians in 1645, first in the rectory at Chedzoy and then in the deanery at Wells. His jailor, the shoe maker and city constable, David Barrett, caught him writing a letter to his wife. When he refused to surrender it, Barrett ran him through with a sword and he died six weeks later, on 10 October 1646. He was buried in an unmarked grave in the choir before the dean's stall. During the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell no dean was appointed and the cathedral fell into disrepair. The bishop went into retirement and some of the clerics were reduced to performing menial tasks.

 

In 1661, after Charles II was restored to the throne, Robert Creighton, the king's chaplain in exile, was appointed dean and was bishop for two years before his death in 1672. His brass lectern, given in thanksgiving, can be seen in the cathedral. He donated the nave's great west window at a cost of £140. Following Creighton's appointment as bishop, the post of dean went to Ralph Bathurst, who had been chaplain to the king, president of Trinity College, Oxford and fellow of the Royal Society. During Bathurst's long tenure the cathedral was restored, but in the Monmouth Rebellion of 1685, Puritan soldiers damaged the west front, tore lead from the roof to make bullets, broke the windows, smashed the organ and furnishings, and for a time stabled their horses in the nave.

 

Restoration began again under Thomas Ken who was appointed by the Crown in 1685 and served until 1691. He was one of seven bishops imprisoned for refusing to sign King James II's "Declaration of Indulgence", which would have enabled Catholics to resume positions of political power, but popular support led to their acquittal. Ken refused to take the oath of allegiance to William III and Mary II because James II had not abdicated and with others, known as the Nonjurors, was put out of office. His successor, Richard Kidder, was killed in the Great Storm of 1703 when two chimney stacks on the palace fell on him and his wife, while they were asleep in bed.

 

By the middle of the 19th century, a major restoration programme was needed. Under Dean Goodenough, the monuments were moved to the cloisters and the remaining medieval paint and whitewash removed in an operation known as "the great scrape". Anthony Salvin took charge of the extensive restoration of the choir. Wooden galleries installed in the 16th century were removed and the stalls were given stone canopies and placed further back within the line of the arcade. The medieval stone pulpitum screen was extended in the centre to support a new organ.

 

In 1933 the Friends of Wells Cathedral were formed to support the cathedral's chapter in the maintenance of the fabric, life and work of the cathedral. The late 20th century saw an extensive restoration programme, particularly of the west front. The stained glass is currently under restoration, with a programme underway to conserve the large 14th-century Jesse Tree window at the eastern terminal of the choir.

 

In January 2014, as part of the Bath film festival, the cathedral hosted a special screening of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. This provoked some controversy, but the church defended its decision to allow the screening.

 

In 2021, a contemporary sculpture by Anthony Gormley was unveiled on a temporary plinth outside the cathedral.

 

Since the 13th century, Wells Cathedral has been the seat of the Bishop of Bath and Wells. Its governing body, the chapter, is made up of five clerical canons (the dean, the precentor, the canon chancellor, the canon treasurer, and the archdeacon of Wells) and four lay members: the administrator (chief executive), Keeper of the Fabric, Overseer of the Estate and the chairman of the cathedral shop and catering boards. The current bishop of Bath and Wells is Peter Hancock, who was installed in a service in the cathedral on 7 June 2014. John Davies has been Dean of Wells since 2016.

 

Employed staff include the organist and master of choristers, head Verger archivist, librarian and the staff of the shop, café and restaurant. The chapter is advised by specialists such as architects, archaeologists and financial analysts.

 

More than a thousand services are held every year. There are daily services of Matins, Holy Communion and Choral Evensong, as well as major celebrations of Christian festivals such as Christmas, Easter, Pentecost and saints' days. The cathedral is also used for the baptisms, weddings and funerals of those with close connections to it. In July 2009 the cathedral undertook the funeral of Harry Patch, the last British Army veteran of World War I, who died at the age of 111.

 

Three Sunday services are led by the resident choir in school terms and choral services are sung on weekdays. The cathedral hosts visiting choirs and does outreach work with local schools as part of its Chorister Outreach Project. It is also a venue for musical events such as an annual concert by the Somerset Chamber Choir.

 

Each year about 150,000 people attend services and another 300,000 visit as tourists. Entry is free, but visitors are encouraged to make a donation towards the annual running costs of around £1.5 million in 2015.

 

Construction of the cathedral began in about 1175, to the design of an unknown master-mason. Wells is the first cathedral in England to be built, from its foundation, in Gothic style. According to art historian John Harvey, it is the first truly Gothic cathedral in the world, its architects having entirely dispensed with all features that bound the contemporary east end of Canterbury Cathedral and the earlier buildings of France, such as the east end of the Abbey of Saint Denis, to the Romanesque. Unlike these churches, Wells has clustered piers rather than columns and has a gallery of identical pointed arches rather than the typically Romanesque form of paired openings. The style, with its simple lancet arches without tracery and convoluted mouldings, is known as Early English Gothic.

 

From about 1192 to 1230, Adam Lock, the earliest master-mason at Wells for whom a name is known, continued the transept and nave in the same manner as his predecessor. Lock was also the builder of the north porch, to his own design.

 

The Early English west front was commenced around 1230 by Thomas Norreys, with building and sculpture continuing for thirty years. Its south-west tower was begun 100 years later and constructed between 1365 and 1395, and the north-west tower between 1425 and 1435, both in the Perpendicular Gothic style to the design of William Wynford, who also filled many of the cathedral's early English lancet windows with delicate tracery.

 

The undercroft and chapter house were built by unknown architects between 1275 and 1310, the undercroft in the Early English and the chapter house in the Geometric style of Decorated Gothic architecture. In about 1310 work commenced on the Lady Chapel, to the design of Thomas Witney, who also built the central tower from 1315 to 1322 in the Decorated Gothic style. The tower was later braced internally with arches by William Joy. Concurrent with this work, in 1329–45 Joy made alterations and extensions to the choir, joining it to the Lady Chapel with the retrochoir, the latter in the Flowing Decorated style.

 

Later changes include the Perpendicular vault of the tower and construction of Sugar's Chapel, 1475–1490 by William Smyth. Also, Gothic Revival renovations were made to the choir and pulpitum by Benjamin Ferrey and Anthony Salvin, 1842–1857.

 

Wells has a total length of 415 feet (126 m). Like Canterbury, Lincoln and Salisbury cathedrals, it has the distinctly English arrangement of two transepts, with the body of the church divided into distinct parts: nave, choir, and retro-choir, beyond which extends the Lady Chapel. The façade is wide, with its towers extending beyond the transepts on either side. There is a large projecting porch on the north side of the nave forming an entry into the cathedral. To the north-east is the large octagonal chapter house, entered from the north choir aisle by a passage and staircase. To the south of the nave is a large cloister, unusual in that the northern range, that adjacent the cathedral, was never built.

 

In section, the cathedral has the usual arrangement of a large church: a central nave with an aisle on each side, separated by two arcades. The elevation is in three stages, arcade, triforium gallery and clerestory. The nave is 67 feet (20 m) in height, very low compared to the Gothic cathedrals of France. It has a markedly horizontal emphasis, caused by the triforium having a unique form, a series of identical narrow openings, lacking the usual definition of the bays. The triforium is separated from the arcade by a single horizontal string course that runs unbroken the length of the nave. There are no vertical lines linking the three stages, as the shafts supporting the vault rise above the triforium.

 

The exterior of Wells Cathedral presents a relatively tidy and harmonious appearance since the greater part of the building was executed in a single style, Early English Gothic. This is uncommon among English cathedrals where the exterior usually exhibits a plethora of styles. At Wells, later changes in the Perpendicular style were universally applied, such as filling the Early English lancet windows with simple tracery, the construction of a parapet that encircles the roof, and the addition of pinnacles framing each gable, similar to those around the chapter house and on the west front. At the eastern end there is a proliferation of tracery with repeated motifs in the Reticulated style, a stage between Geometric and Flowing Decorated tracery.

 

The west front is 100 feet (30 m) high and 147 feet (45 m) wide, and built of Inferior Oolite of the Middle Jurassic period, which came from the Doulting Stone Quarry, about 8 miles (13 km) to the east. According to the architectural historian Alec Clifton-Taylor, it is "one of the great sights of England".

 

West fronts in general take three distinct forms: those that follow the elevation of the nave and aisles, those that have paired towers at the end of each aisle, framing the nave, and those that screen the form of the building. The west front at Wells has the paired-tower form, unusual in that the towers do not indicate the location of the aisles, but extend well beyond them, screening the dimensions and profile of the building.

 

The west front rises in three distinct stages, each clearly defined by a horizontal course. This horizontal emphasis is counteracted by six strongly projecting buttresses defining the cross-sectional divisions of nave, aisles and towers, and are highly decorated, each having canopied niches containing the largest statues on the façade.

 

At the lowest level of the façade is a plain base, contrasting with and stabilising the ornate arcades that rise above it. The base is penetrated by three doors, which are in stark contrast to the often imposing portals of French Gothic cathedrals. The outer two are of domestic proportion and the central door is ornamented only by a central post, quatrefoil and the fine mouldings of the arch.

 

Above the basement rise two storeys, ornamented with quatrefoils and niches originally holding about four hundred statues, with three hundred surviving until the mid-20th century. Since then, some have been restored or replaced, including the ruined figure of Christ in the gable.

 

The third stages of the flanking towers were both built in the Perpendicular style of the late 14th century, to the design of William Wynford; that on the north-west was not begun until about 1425. The design maintains the general proportions, and continues the strong projection of the buttresses.

 

The finished product has been criticised for its lack of pinnacles, and it is probable that the towers were intended to carry spires which were never built. Despite its lack of spires or pinnacles, the architectural historian Banister Fletcher describes it as "the highest development in English Gothic of this type of façade."

 

The sculptures on the west front at Wells include standing figures, seated figures, half-length angels and narratives in high relief. Many of the figures are life-sized or larger. Together they constitute the finest display of medieval carving in England. The figures and many of the architectural details were painted in bright colours, and the colouring scheme has been deduced from flakes of paint still adhering to some surfaces. The sculptures occupy nine architectural zones stretching horizontally across the entire west front and around the sides and the eastern returns of the towers which extend beyond the aisles. The strongly projecting buttresses have tiers of niches which contain many of the largest figures. Other large figures, including that of Christ, occupy the gable. A single figure stands in one of two later niches high on the northern tower.

 

In 1851 the archaeologist Charles Robert Cockerell published his analysis of the iconography, numbering the nine sculptural divisions from the lowest to the highest. He defined the theme as "a calendar for unlearned men" illustrating the doctrines and history of the Christian faith, its introduction to Britain and its protection by princes and bishops. He likens the arrangement and iconography to the Te Deum.

 

According to Cockerell, the side of the façade that is to the south of the central door is the more sacred and the scheme is divided accordingly. The lowest range of niches each contained a standing figure, of which all but four figures on the west front, two on each side, have been destroyed. More have survived on the northern and eastern sides of the north tower. Cockerell speculates that those to the south of the portal represented prophets and patriarchs of the Old Testament while those to the north represented early missionaries to Britain, of which Augustine of Canterbury, St Birinus, and Benedict Biscop are identifiable by their attributes. In the second zone, above each pair of standing figures, is a quatrefoil containing a half-length angel in relief, some of which have survived. Between the gables of the niches are quatrefoils that contain a series of narratives from the Bible, with the Old Testament stories to the south, above the prophets and patriarchs, and those from the New Testament to the north. A horizontal course runs around the west front dividing the architectural storeys at this point.

 

Above the course, zones four and five, as identified by Cockerell, contain figures which represent the Christian Church in Britain, with the spiritual lords such as bishops, abbots, abbesses and saintly founders of monasteries on the south, while kings, queens and princes occupy the north. Many of the figures survive and many have been identified in the light of their various attributes. There is a hierarchy of size, with the more significant figures larger and enthroned in their niches rather than standing. Immediately beneath the upper course are a series of small niches containing dynamic sculptures of the dead coming forth from their tombs on the Day of Judgement. Although naked, some of the dead are defined as royalty by their crowns and others as bishops by their mitres. Some emerge from their graves with joy and hope, and others with despair.

 

The niches in the lowest zone of the gable contain nine angels, of which Cockerell identifies Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and Uriel. In the next zone are the taller figures of the twelve apostles, some, such as John, Andrew and Bartholomew, clearly identifiable by the attributes that they carry. The uppermost niches of the gable contained the figure of Christ the Judge at the centre, with the Virgin Mary on his right and John the Baptist on his left. The figures all suffered from iconoclasm. A new statue of Jesus was carved for the central niche, but the two side niches now contain cherubim. Christ and the Virgin Mary are also represented by now headless figures in a Coronation of the Virgin in a niche above the central portal. A damaged figure of the Virgin and Christ Child occupies a quatrefoil in the spandrel of the door.

 

The central tower appears to date from the early 13th century. It was substantially reconstructed in the early 14th century during the remodelling of the east end, necessitating the internal bracing of the piers a decade or so later. In the 14th century the tower was given a timber and lead spire which burnt down in 1439. The exterior was then reworked in the Perpendicular style and given the present parapet and pinnacles. Alec Clifton-Taylor describes it as "outstanding even in Somerset, a county famed for the splendour of its church towers".

 

The north porch is described by art historian Nikolaus Pevsner as "sumptuously decorated", and intended as the main entrance. Externally it is simple and rectangular with plain side walls. The entrance is a steeply arched portal framed by rich mouldings of eight shafts with stiff-leaf capitals each encircled by an annular moulding at middle height. Those on the left are figurative, containing images representing the martyrdom of St Edmund the Martyr. The walls are lined with deep niches framed by narrow shafts with capitals and annulets like those of the portal. The path to the north porch is lined by four sculptures in Purbeck stone, each by Mary Spencer Watson, representing the symbols of the Evangelists.

 

The cloisters were built in the late 13th century and largely rebuilt from 1430 to 1508 and have wide openings divided by mullions and transoms, and tracery in the Perpendicular Gothic style. The vault has lierne ribs that form octagons at the centre of each compartment, the joints of each rib having decorative bosses. The eastern range is of two storeys, of which the upper is the library built in the 15th century.

 

Because Wells Cathedral was secular rather than monastic, cloisters were not a practical necessity. They were omitted from several other secular cathedrals but were built here and at Chichester. Explanations for their construction at these two secular cathedrals range from the processional to the aesthetic. As at Chichester, there is no northern range to the cloisters. In monastic cloisters it was the north range, benefiting most from winter sunlight, that was often used as a scriptorium.

 

In 1969, when a large chunk of stone fell from a statue near the main door, it became apparent that there was an urgent need for restoration of the west front. Detailed studies of the stonework and of conservation practices were undertaken under the cathedral architect, Alban D. R. Caroe and a restoration committee formed. The methods selected were those devised by Eve and Robert Baker. W. A. (Bert) Wheeler, clerk of works to the cathedral 1935–1978, had previously experimented with washing and surface treatment of architectural carvings on the building and his techniques were among those tried on the statues.

 

The conservation was carried out between 1974 and 1986, wherever possible using non-invasive procedures such as washing with water and a solution of lime, filling gaps and damaged surfaces with soft mortar to prevent the ingress of water and stabilising statues that were fracturing through corrosion of metal dowels. The surfaces were finished by painting with a thin coat of mortar and silane to resist further erosion and attack by pollutants. The restoration of the façade revealed much paint adhering to the statues and their niches, indicating that it had once been brightly coloured.

 

The particular character of this Early English interior is dependent on the proportions of the simple lancet arches. It is also dependent on the refinement of the architectural details, in particular the mouldings.

 

The arcade, which takes the same form in the nave, choir and transepts, is distinguished by the richness of both mouldings and carvings. Each pier of the arcade has a surface enrichment of 24 slender shafts in eight groups of three, rising beyond the capitals to form the deeply undulating mouldings of the arches. The capitals themselves are remarkable for the vitality of the stylised foliage, in a style known as "stiff-leaf". The liveliness contrasts with the formality of the moulded shafts and the smooth unbroken areas of ashlar masonry in the spandrels. Each capital is different, and some contain small figures illustrating narratives.

 

The vault of the nave rises steeply in a simple quadripartite form, in harmony with the nave arcade. The eastern end of the choir was extended and the whole upper part elaborated in the second quarter of the 14th century by William Joy. The vault has a multiplicity of ribs in a net-like form, which is very different from that of the nave, and is perhaps a recreation in stone of a local type of compartmented wooden roof of which examples remain from the 15th century, including those at St Cuthbert's Church, Wells. The vaults of the aisles of the choir also have a unique pattern.

 

Until the early 14th century, the interior of the cathedral was in a unified style, but it was to undergo two significant changes, to the tower and to the eastern end. Between 1315 and 1322 the central tower was heightened and topped by a spire, which caused the piers that supported it to show signs of stress. In 1338 the mason William Joy employed an unorthodox solution by inserting low arches topped by inverted arches of similar dimensions, forming scissors-like structures. These arches brace the piers of the crossing on three sides, while the easternmost side is braced by a choir screen. The bracing arches are known as "St Andrew's Cross arches", in a reference to the patron saint of the cathedral. They have been described by Wim Swaan – rightly or wrongly – as "brutally massive" and intrusive in an otherwise restrained interior.

 

Wells Cathedral has a square east end to the choir, as is usual, and like several other cathedrals including Salisbury and Lichfield, has a lower Lady Chapel projecting at the eastern end, begun by Thomas Witney in about 1310, possibly before the chapter house was completed. The Lady Chapel seems to have begun as a free-standing structure in the form of an elongated octagon, but the plan changed and it was linked to the eastern end by extension of the choir and construction of a second transept or retrochoir east of the choir, probably by William Joy.

 

The Lady Chapel has a vault of complex and somewhat irregular pattern, as the chapel is not symmetrical about both axes. The main ribs are intersected by additional non-supporting, lierne ribs, which in this case form a star-shaped pattern at the apex of the vault. It is one of the earliest lierne vaults in England. There are five large windows, of which four are filled with fragments of medieval glass. The tracery of the windows is in the style known as Reticulated Gothic, having a pattern of a single repeated shape, in this case a trefoil, giving a "reticulate" or net-like appearance.

 

The retrochoir extends across the east end of the choir and into the east transepts. At its centre the vault is supported by a remarkable structure of angled piers. Two of these are placed as to complete the octagonal shape of the Lady Chapel, a solution described by Francis Bond as "an intuition of Genius". The piers have attached shafts of marble, and, with the vaults that they support, create a vista of great complexity from every angle. The windows of the retrochoir are in the Reticulated style like those of the Lady Chapel, but are fully Flowing Decorated in that the tracery mouldings form ogival curves.

 

The chapter house was begun in the late 13th century and built in two stages, completed about 1310. It is a two-storeyed structure with the main chamber raised on an undercroft. It is entered from a staircase which divides and turns, one branch leading through the upper storey of Chain Gate to Vicars' Close. The Decorated interior is described by Alec Clifton-Taylor as "architecturally the most beautiful in England". It is octagonal, with its ribbed vault supported on a central column. The column is surrounded by shafts of Purbeck Marble, rising to a single continuous rippling foliate capital of stylised oak leaves and acorns, quite different in character from the Early English stiff-leaf foliage. Above the moulding spring 32 ribs of strong profile, giving an effect generally likened to "a great palm tree". The windows are large with Geometric Decorated tracery that is beginning to show an elongation of form, and ogees in the lesser lights that are characteristic of Flowing Decorated tracery. The tracery lights still contain ancient glass. Beneath the windows are 51 stalls, the canopies of which are enlivened by carvings including many heads carved in a light-hearted manner.

 

Wells Cathedral contains one of the most substantial collections of medieval stained glass in England, despite damage by Parliamentary troops in 1642 and 1643. The oldest surviving glass dates from the late 13th century and is in two windows on the west side of the chapter-house staircase. Two windows in the south choir aisle are from 1310 to 1320.

 

The Lady Chapel has five windows, of which four date from 1325 to 1330 and include images of a local saint, Dunstan. The east window was restored to a semblance of its original appearance by Thomas Willement in 1845. The other windows have complete canopies, but the pictorial sections are fragmented.

 

The east window of the choir is a broad, seven-light window dating from 1340 to 1345. It depicts the Tree of Jesse (the genealogy of Christ) and demonstrates the use of silver staining, a new technique that allowed the artist to paint details on the glass in yellow, as well as black. The combination of yellow and green glass and the application of the bright yellow stain gives the window its popular name, the "Golden Window". It is flanked by two windows each side in the clerestory, with large figures of saints, also dated to 1340–45. In 2010 a major conservation programme was undertaken on the Jesse Tree window.

 

The panels in the chapel of St Katherine are attributed to Arnold of Nijmegen and date from about 1520. They were acquired from the destroyed church of Saint-Jean, Rouen, with the last panel having been purchased in 1953.

 

The large triple lancet to the nave west end was glazed at the expense of Dean Creighton at a cost of £140 in 1664. It was repaired in 1813, and the central light was largely replaced to a design by Archibald Keightley Nicholson between 1925 and 1931. The main north and south transept end windows by James Powell and Sons were erected in the early 20th century.

 

The greater part of the stone carving of Wells Cathedral comprises foliate capitals in the stiff-leaf style. They are found ornamenting the piers of the nave, choir and transepts. Stiff-leaf foliage is highly abstract. Though possibly influenced by carvings of acanthus leaves or vine leaves, it cannot be easily identified with any particular plant. Here the carving of the foliage is varied and vigorous, the springing leaves and deep undercuts casting shadows that contrast with the surface of the piers. In the transepts and towards the crossing in the nave the capitals have many small figurative carvings among the leaves. These include a man with toothache and a series of four scenes depicting the "Wages of Sin" in a narrative of fruit stealers who creep into an orchard and are then beaten by the farmer. Another well-known carving is in the north transept aisle: a foliate corbel, on which climbs a lizard, sometimes identified as a salamander, a symbol of eternal life.

 

Carvings in the Decorated Gothic style may be found in the eastern end of the buildings, where there are many carved bosses. In the chapter house, the carvings of the 51 stalls include numerous small heads of great variety, many of them smiling or laughing. A well-known figure is the corbel of the dragon-slaying monk in the chapter house stair. The large continuous capital that encircles the central pillar of the chapter house is markedly different in style to the stiff-leaf of the Early English period. In contrast to the bold projections and undercutting of the earlier work, it has a rippling form and is clearly identifiable as grapevine.

 

The 15th-century cloisters have many small bosses ornamenting the vault. Two in the west cloister, near the gift shop and café, have been called sheela na gigs, i. e. female figures displaying their genitals and variously judged to depict the sin of lust or stem from ancient fertility cults.

 

Wells Cathedral has one of the finest sets of misericords in Britain. Its clergy has a long tradition of singing or reciting from the Book of Psalms each day, along with the customary daily reading of the Holy Office. In medieval times the clergy assembled in the church eight times daily for the canonical hours. As the greater part of the services was recited while standing, many monastic or collegiate churches fitted stalls whose seats tipped up to provide a ledge for the monk or cleric to lean against. These were "misericords" because their installation was an act of mercy. Misericords typically have a carved figurative bracket beneath the ledge framed by two floral motifs known, in heraldic manner, as "supporters".

 

The misericords date from 1330 to 1340. They may have been carved under the direction of Master Carpenter John Strode, although his name is not recorded before 1341. He was assisted by Bartholomew Quarter, who is documented from 1343. They originally numbered 90, of which 65 have survived. Sixty-one are installed in the choir, three are displayed in the cathedral, and one is held by the Victoria and Albert Museum. New stalls were ordered when the eastern end of the choir was extended in the early 14th century. The canons complained that they had borne the cost of the rebuilding and ordered the prebendary clerics to pay for their own stalls. When the newly refurbished choir opened in 1339 many misericords were left unfinished, including one-fifth of the surviving 65. Many of the clerics had not paid, having been called to contribute a total sum of £200. The misericords survived better than the other sections of the stalls, which during the Protestant Reformation had their canopies chopped off and galleries inserted above them. One misericord, showing a boy pulling a thorn from his foot, dates from the 17th century. In 1848 came a complete rearrangement of the choir furniture, and 61 of the misericords were reused in the restructured stalls.

 

The subject matter of the carvings of the central brackets as misericords varies, but many themes recur in different churches. Typically the themes are less unified or directly related to the Bible and Christian theology than small sculptures seen elsewhere within churches, such as bosses. This applies at Wells, where none of the misericord carvings is directly based on a Bible story. The subjects, chosen either by the woodcarver, or perhaps by the one paying for the stall, have no overriding theme. The sole unifying elements are the roundels on each side of the pictorial subject, which all show elaborately carved foliage, in most cases formal and stylised in the later Decorated manner, but with several examples of naturalistic foliage, including roses and bindweed. Many of the subjects carry traditional interpretations. The image of the "Pelican in her Piety" (believed to feed her young on her own blood) is a recognised symbol for Christ's love for the Church. A cat playing with a mouse may represent the Devil snaring a human soul. Other subjects illustrate popular fables or sayings such as "When the fox preaches, look to your geese". Many depict animals, some of which may symbolise a human vice or virtue, or an aspect of faith.

 

Twenty-seven of the carvings depict animals: rabbits, dogs, a puppy biting a cat, a ewe feeding a lamb, monkeys, lions, bats, and the Early Christian motif of two doves drinking from a ewer. Eighteen have mythological subjects, including mermaids, dragons and wyverns. Five are clearly narrative, such as the Fox and the Geese, and the story of Alexander the Great being raised to Heaven by griffins. There are three heads: a bishop in a mitre, an angel, and a woman wearing a veil over hair arranged in coils over each ear. Eleven carvings show human figures, among which are several of remarkable design, conceived by the artist specifically for their purpose of supporting a shelf. One figure lies beneath the seat, supporting the shelf with a cheek, a hand and a foot. Another sits in a contorted manner supporting the weight on his elbow, while a further figure squats with his knees wide apart and a strained look on his face.

 

Some of the cathedral's fittings and monuments are hundreds of years old. The brass lectern in the Lady Chapel dates from 1661 and has a moulded stand and foliate crest. In the north transept chapel is a 17th-century oak screen with columns, formerly used in cow stalls, with artisan Ionic capitals and cornice, set forward over the chest tomb of John Godelee. There is a bound oak chest from the 14th century, which was used to store the chapter seal and key documents. The bishop's throne dates from 1340, and has a panelled, canted front and stone doorway, and a deep nodding cusped ogee canopy above it, with three-stepped statue niches and pinnacles. The throne was restored by Anthony Salvin around 1850. Opposite the throne is a 19th-century octagonal pulpit on a coved base with panelled sides, and steps up from the north aisle. The round font in the south transept is from the former Saxon cathedral and has an arcade of round-headed arches, on a round plinth. The font cover was made in 1635 and is decorated with the heads of putti. The Chapel of St Martin is a memorial to every Somerset man who fell in World War I.

 

The monuments and tombs include Gisa, bishop; † 1088; William of Bitton, bishop; † 1274; William of March, bishop; † 1302; John Droxford; † 1329; John Godelee; † 1333; John Middleton, died †1350; Ralph of Shrewsbury, died †; John Harewell, bishop; † 1386; William Bykonyll; † c. 1448; John Bernard; † 1459; Thomas Beckington; † died 1464; John Gunthorpe; † 1498; John Still; † 1607; Robert Creighton; † 1672; Richard Kidder, bishop; † 1703; George Hooper, bishop; † 1727 and Arthur Harvey, bishop; † 1894.

 

In the north transept is Wells Cathedral clock, an astronomical clock from about 1325 believed to be by Peter Lightfoot, a monk of Glastonbury. Its mechanism, dated between 1386 and 1392, was replaced in the 19th century and the original moved to the Science Museum in London, where it still operates. It is the second oldest surviving clock in England after the Salisbury Cathedral clock.

 

The clock has its original medieval face. Apart from the time on a 24-hour dial, it shows the motion of the Sun and Moon, the phases of the Moon, and the time since the last new Moon. The astronomical dial presents a geocentric or pre-Copernican view, with the Sun and Moon revolving round a central fixed Earth, like that of the clock at Ottery St Mary. The quarters are chimed by a quarter jack: a small automaton known as Jack Blandifers, who hits two bells with hammers and two with his heels. At the striking of the clock, jousting knights appear above the clock face.

 

On the outer wall of the transept, opposite Vicars' Hall, is a second clock face of the same clock, placed there just over seventy years after the interior clock and driven by the same mechanism. The second clock face has two quarter jacks (which strike on the quarter-hour) in the form of knights in armour.

 

In 2010 the official clock-winder retired and was replaced by an electric mechanism.

 

The first record of an organ at this church dates from 1310. A smaller organ, probably for the Lady Chapel, was installed in 1415. In 1620 an organ built by Thomas Dallam was installed at a cost of £398 1s 5d.

 

The 1620 organ was destroyed by parliamentary soldiers in 1643. An organ built in 1662 was enlarged in 1786 and again in 1855. In 1909–1910 an organ was built by Harrison & Harrison of Durham, with the best parts of the old organ retained. It has been serviced by the same company ever since.

 

Since November 1996 the cathedral has also had a portable chamber organ, by the Scottish makers, Lammermuir. It is used regularly to accompany performances of Tudor and baroque music.

 

The first recorded organist of Wells was Walter Bagele (or Vageler) in 1416. The post of organist or assistant organist has been held by more than 60 people since. Peter Stanley Lyons was Master of Choristers at Wells Cathedral, and Director of Music at Wells Cathedral School in 1954–1960. The choral conductor James William Webb-Jones, father of Lyons's wife Bridget (whom he married in the cathedral), was Headmaster of Wells Cathedral School in 1955–1960. Malcolm Archer was the appointed Organist and Master of the Choristers from 1996 to 2004. Matthew Owens was the appointed organist from 2005 to 2019.

 

There has been a choir of boy choristers at Wells since 909. Currently there are 18 boy choristers and a similar number of girl choristers, aged from eight to fourteen. The Vicars Choral was formed in the 12th century and the sung liturgy provided by a traditional cathedral choir of men and boys until the formation of an additional choir of girls in 1994. The boys and girls sing alternately with the Vicars Choral and are educated at Wells Cathedral School.

 

The Vicars Choral currently number twelve men, of whom three are choral scholars. Since 1348 the College of Vicars had its own accommodation in a quadrangle converted in the early 15th century to form Vicar's Close. The Vicars Choral generally perform with the choristers, except on Wednesdays, when they sing alone, allowing them to present a different repertoire, in particular plainsong.

 

In December 2010 Wells Cathedral Choir was rated by Gramophone magazine as "the highest ranking choir with children in the world". It continues to provide music for the liturgy at Sunday and weekday services. The choir has made many recordings and toured frequently, including performances in Beijing and Hong Kong in 2012. Its repertoire ranges from the choral music of the Renaissance to recently commissioned works.

 

The Wells Cathedral Chamber Choir is a mixed adult choir of 25 members, formed in 1986 to sing at the midnight service on Christmas Eve, and invited to sing at several other special services. It now sings for about 30 services a year, when the Cathedral Choir is in recess or on tour, and spends one week a year singing as the "choir in residence" at another cathedral. Although primarily liturgical, the choir's repertoire includes other forms of music, as well as performances at engagements such as weddings and funerals.

 

The cathedral is home to Wells Cathedral Oratorio Society (WCOS), founded in 1896. With around 160 voices, the society gives three concerts a year under the direction of Matthew Owens, Organist and Master of the Choristers at the cathedral. Concerts are normally in early November, December (an annual performance of Handel's Messiah) and late March. It performs with a number of specialist orchestras including: Music for Awhile, Chameleon Arts and La Folia.

 

The bells at Wells Cathedral are the heaviest ring of ten bells in the world, the tenor bell (the 10th and largest), known as Harewell, weighing 56.25 long hundredweight (2,858 kg). They are hung for full-circle ringing in the English style of change ringing. These bells are now hung in the south-west tower, although some were originally hung in the central tower.

 

The library above the eastern cloister was built between 1430 and 1508. Its collection is in three parts: early documents housed in the Muniment Room; the collection predating 1800 housed in the Chained Library; and the post-1800 collection housed in the Reading Room. The chapter's earlier collection was destroyed during the Reformation, so that the present library consists chiefly of early printed books, rather than medieval manuscripts. The earlier books in the Chained Library number 2,800 volumes and give an indication of the variety of interests of the members of the cathedral chapter from the Reformation until 1800. The focus of the collection is predominantly theology, but there are volumes on science, medicine, exploration, and languages. Books of particular interest include Pliny's Natural History printed in 1472, an Atlas of the World by Abraham Ortelius, printed in 1606, and a set of the works by Aristotle that once belonged to Erasmus. The library is open to the public at appointed times in the summer and presents a small exhibition of documents and books.

 

Three early registers of the Dean and Chapter edited by W. H. B. Bird for the Historical Manuscripts Commissioners – Liber Albus I (White Book; R I), Liber Albus II (R III) and Liber Ruber (Red Book; R II, section i) – were published in 1907. They contain with some repetition, a cartulary of possessions of the cathedral, with grants of land back to the 8th century, well before hereditary surnames developed in England, and acts of the Dean and Chapter and surveys of their estates, mostly in Somerset.

 

Adjacent to the cathedral is a large lawned area, Cathedral Green, with three ancient gateways: Brown's Gatehouse, Penniless Porch and Chain Gate. On the green is the 12th-century Old Deanery, largely rebuilt in the late 15th century by Dean Gunthorpe and remodelled by Dean Bathurst in the late 17th century. No longer the dean's residence, it is used as diocesan offices.

 

To the south of the cathedral is the moated Bishop's Palace, begun about 1210 by Jocelin of Wells but dating mostly from the 1230s. In the 15th century Thomas Beckington added a north wing, now the bishop's residence. It was restored and extended by Benjamin Ferrey between 1846 and 1854.

 

To the north of the cathedral and connected to it by the Chain Gate is Vicars' Close, a street planned in the 14th century and claimed to be the oldest purely residential street in Europe, with all but one of its original buildings intact. Buildings in the close include the Vicars Hall and gateway at the south end, and the Vicars Chapel and Library at the north end.

 

The Liberty of St Andrew was the historic liberty and parish that encompassed the cathedral and surrounding lands closely associated with it.

 

The English painter J. M. W. Turner visited Wells in 1795, making sketches of the precinct and a water colour of the west front, now in the Tate gallery. Other artists whose paintings of the cathedral are in national collections are Albert Goodwin, John Syer and Ken Howard.

 

The cathedral served to inspire Ken Follett's 1989 novel The Pillars of the Earth and with a modified central tower, featured as the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral at the end of the 2010 television adaptation of that novel. The interior of the cathedral was used for a 2007 Doctor Who episode, "The Lazarus Experiment", while the exterior shots were filmed at Southwark Cathedral.

 

An account of the damage to the cathedral during the Monmouth Rebellion is included in Arthur Conan Doyle's 1889 historical novel Micah Clarke.

 

The cathedral provided scenes for the 2019–2020 television series The Spanish Princess.

 

In Scotland we have a series of archeological features built between 500-4,000 years before Christ. We treasure these as the irreplaceable historical artifacts they are. Nah, we leave them out in fields where they offer shelter to sheep and cows.

 

Just to be clear then, anywhere up to 6,000 years ago a bunch of folks, who had way better things to do (finding enough to eat), set about moving around, and erecting, the biggest pieces of stone they could find. It is amazing to stand in the wind and snow and put your hands on something that was put there by other hands, 300 generations or so ago. And they are everywhere. Which doesn't mean they are always easy to get to or easy to find, but well worth the effort - hail, horizontal rain, or snow. I plan to return with these to try a little watercoloring for final.

The hermitage church of San Pantaleon de Losa is assuredly the most unforgettable of this whole trip, not for its own architectural features but for the unique and truly memorable natural site chosen for the erection of this very small Romanesque church from the late 1100s.

 

Imagine an enormous outcrop of rock, a giant cliff rising above the surrounding plain like the prow of some alien ship, and perched atop this gigantic spear of stone, the hermitage church... Driving up the extremely steep and narrow (not to mention totally devoid of any guardrails!) track that leads to the parking lot, halfway up the jutting rock, will leave you some memories of fast heartbeats... and driving down the same will leave you even more! Then, the rest of the slope one must climb on foot (with photo backpack and tripod) is even steeper, but the reward is worth the difficulty of the ascent.

 

To conclude this day of uploads focusing on sculpture, this is a closeup view of the capitals on the left of the window shown in the previous photograph. In the usual exuberance of imagination so often deployed by Romanesque artists, we have a monster devouring the column beneath it, an amazingly realistic screaming face and finally, a floral, plant-like basket on the right.

 

This photo also allows you to get a better view at the collection of faces making up the inner archivolt over the window.

The raccoon (/rəˈkuːn/ or US: /ræˈkuːn/ ⓘ, Procyon lotor), also spelled racoon[3] and sometimes called the common raccoon to distinguish it from the other species, is a mammal native to North America. It is the largest of the procyonid family, having a body length of 40 to 70 cm (16 to 28 in), and a body weight of 5 to 26 kg (11 to 57 lb). Its grayish coat mostly consists of dense underfur, which insulates it against cold weather. Three of the raccoon's most distinctive features are its extremely dexterous front paws, its facial mask, and its ringed tail, which are themes in the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas relating to the animal. The raccoon is noted for its intelligence, as studies show that it is able to remember the solution to tasks for at least three years. It is usually nocturnal and omnivorous, eating about 40% invertebrates, 33% plants, and 27% vertebrates.

 

The original habitats of the raccoon are deciduous and mixed forests, but due to their adaptability, they have extended their range to mountainous areas, coastal marshes, and urban areas, where some homeowners consider them to be pests. As a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, raccoons are now also distributed across central Europe, the Caucasus, and Japan.

 

In Europe, the raccoon is included since 2016 in the list of Invasive Alien Species of Union concern (the Union list).[4] This implies that this species cannot be imported, bred, transported, commercialized, or intentionally released into the environment in the whole of the European Union.[5]

 

Though previously thought to be generally solitary, there is now evidence that raccoons engage in sex-specific social behavior. Related females often share a common area, while unrelated males live together in groups of up to four raccoons in order to maintain their positions against foreign males during the mating season and against other potential invaders. Home range sizes vary anywhere from 3 ha (7.4 acres) for females in cities, to 5,000 ha (12,000 acres) for males in prairies. After a gestation period of about 65 days, two to five young known as "kits" are born in spring. The kits are subsequently raised by their mother until dispersal in late fall. Although captive raccoons have been known to live over 20 years, their life expectancy in the wild is only 1.8 to 3.1 years. In many areas, hunting and vehicular injury are the two most common causes of death.

 

Etymology

 

The mask of a raccoon is often interrupted by a brown-black streak that extends from forehead to nose.[6]

Names for the species include the common raccoon,[7] North American raccoon,[8] and northern raccoon.[9] In various North American native languages, the reference to the animal's manual dexterity, or use of its hands is the source for the names.[10] The word raccoon was adopted into English from the native Powhatan term meaning 'animal that scratches with its hands', as used in the Colony of Virginia. It was recorded on John Smith's list of Powhatan words as aroughcun, and on that of William Strachey as arathkone.[11] It has also been identified as a reflex of a Proto-Algonquian root *ahrah-koon-em, meaning '[the] one who rubs, scrubs and scratches with its hands'.[12] The word is sometimes spelled as racoon.[13]

 

In Spanish, the raccoon is called mapache, derived from the Nahuatl mapachtli of the Aztecs, meaning '[the] one who takes everything in its hands'.[14]

 

Its Latin name literally means 'before-dog washer'.[15] The genus Procyon was named by Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr.[10] The animal's observed habit of "washing" or "dowsing" (see below) is the source of its name in other languages.[16][17] For example, the French "raton laveur" means "washing rat".

 

The colloquial abbreviation coon is used in words like coonskin for fur clothing and in phrases like old coon as a self-designation of trappers.[18][19] In the 1830s, the United States Whig Party used the raccoon as an emblem, causing them to be pejoratively known as "coons" by their political opponents, who saw them as too sympathetic to African-Americans. Soon after that the term became an ethnic slur,[20] especially in use between 1880 and 1920 (see coon song), and the term is still considered offensive.[21] Dogs bred to hunt raccoons are called coonhound and coon dog.[22]

 

Taxonomy

 

Skins of P. lotor and P. cancrivorus

 

Skulls of P. lotor and P. cancrivorus

In the first decades after its discovery by the members of the expedition of Christopher Columbus, who were the first Europeans to leave a written record about the species, taxonomists thought the raccoon was related to many different species, including dogs, cats, badgers and particularly bears.[23] Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern taxonomy, placed the raccoon in the genus Ursus, first as Ursus cauda elongata ('long-tailed bear') in the second edition of his Systema Naturae (1740), then as Ursus Lotor ('washer bear') in the tenth edition (1758–59).[24][25] In 1780, Gottlieb Conrad Christian Storr placed the raccoon in its own genus Procyon, which can be translated as either 'before the dog' or 'doglike'.[26][27] It is also possible that Storr had its nocturnal lifestyle in mind and chose the star Procyon as eponym for the species.[28][29]

 

Evolution

Based on fossil evidence from Russia and Bulgaria, the first known members of the family Procyonidae lived in Europe in the late Oligocene about 25 million years ago.[30] Similar tooth and skull structures suggest procyonids and weasels share a common ancestor, but molecular analysis indicates a closer relationship between raccoons and bears.[31] After the then-existing species crossed the Bering Strait at least six million years later in the early Miocene, the center of its distribution was probably in Central America.[32] Coatis (Nasua and Nasuella) and raccoons (Procyon) have been considered to share common descent from a species in the genus Paranasua present between 5.2 and 6.0 million years ago.[33] This assumption, based on morphological comparisons of fossils, conflicts with a 2006 genetic analysis which indicates raccoons are more closely related to ringtails.[34] Unlike other procyonids, such as the crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus), the ancestors of the common raccoon left tropical and subtropical areas and migrated farther north about 2.5 million years ago, in a migration that has been confirmed by the discovery of fossils in the Great Plains dating back to the middle of the Pliocene.[35][33] Its most recent ancestor was likely Procyon rexroadensis, a large Blancan raccoon from the Rexroad Formation characterized by its narrow back teeth and large lower jaw.[36]

 

Subspecies

 

A Torch Key raccoon (P. l. incautus) in Cudjoe Key, Florida. Subspecies inhabiting the Florida Keys are characterized by their small size and very pale fur.

 

Female raccoon of the Vancouver Island subspecies at Sidney, British Columbia, with characteristic dark fur

As of 2005, Mammal Species of the World recognizes 22 subspecies of raccoons.[37] Four of these subspecies living only on small Central American and Caribbean islands were often regarded as distinct species after their discovery. These are the Bahamian raccoon and Guadeloupe raccoon, which are very similar to each other; the Tres Marias raccoon, which is larger than average and has an angular skull; and the extinct Barbados raccoon. Studies of their morphological and genetic traits in 1999, 2003 and 2005 led all these island raccoons to be listed as subspecies of the common raccoon in Mammal Species of the World's third edition. A fifth island raccoon population, the Cozumel raccoon, which weighs only 3 to 4 kg (6.6 to 8.8 lb) and has notably small teeth, is still regarded as a separate species.[38][39][40][41]

 

The four smallest raccoon subspecies, with a typical weight of 1.8 to 2.7 kg (4.0 to 6.0 lb), live along the southern coast of Florida and on the adjacent islands; an example is the Ten Thousand Islands raccoon (Procyon lotor marinus).[42] Most of the other 15 subspecies differ only slightly from each other in coat color, size and other physical characteristics.[43][44] The two most widespread subspecies are the eastern raccoon (Procyon lotor lotor) and the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon (Procyon lotor hirtus). Both share a comparatively dark coat with long hairs, but the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon is larger than the eastern raccoon. The eastern raccoon occurs in all U.S. states and Canadian provinces to the north of South Carolina and Tennessee. The adjacent range of the Upper Mississippi Valley raccoon covers all U.S. states and Canadian provinces to the north of Louisiana, Texas and New Mexico.[45]

 

The taxonomic identity of feral raccoons inhabiting Central Europe, Causasia and Japan is unknown, as the founding populations consisted of uncategorized specimens from zoos and fur farms.

 

Description

Physical characteristics

 

Lower side of front paw with visible vibrissae on the tips of the digits

 

Skeleton

 

Skull with dentition: 2/2 molars, 4/4 premolars, 1/1 canines, 3/3 incisors

 

Baculum or penis bone

 

Female genitourinary system

 

Male genitourinary system

Head to hindquarters, raccoons measure between 40 and 70 cm (16 and 28 in), not including the bushy tail which can measure between 20 and 40 cm (7.9 and 15.7 in), but is usually not much longer than 25 cm (9.8 in).[71][72][73] The shoulder height is between 23 and 30 cm (9.1 and 11.8 in).[74] The body weight of an adult raccoon varies considerably with habitat, making the raccoon one of the most variably sized mammals. It can range from 2 to 26 kg (4.4 to 57.3 lb), but is usually between 5 and 12 kg (11 and 26 lb). The smallest specimens live in southern Florida, while those near the northern limits of the raccoon's range tend to be the largest (see Bergmann's rule).[75] Males are usually 15 to 20% heavier than females.[76] At the beginning of winter, a raccoon can weigh twice as much as in spring because of fat storage.[77][78][79] The largest recorded wild raccoon weighed 28.4 kg (63 lb) and measured 140 cm (55 in) in total length, by far the largest size recorded for a procyonid.[80][81]

 

The most characteristic physical feature of the raccoon is the area of black fur around the eyes, which contrasts sharply with the surrounding white face coloring. This is reminiscent of a "bandit's mask" and has thus enhanced the animal's reputation for mischief.[82][83] The slightly rounded ears are also bordered by white fur. Raccoons are assumed to recognize the facial expression and posture of other members of their species more quickly because of the conspicuous facial coloration and the alternating light and dark rings on the tail.[84][85][86] The dark mask may also reduce glare and thus enhance night vision.[85][86] On other parts of the body, the long and stiff guard hairs, which shed moisture, are usually colored in shades of gray and, to a lesser extent, brown.[87] Raccoons with a very dark coat are more common in the German population because individuals with such coloring were among those initially released to the wild.[88] The dense underfur, which accounts for almost 90% of the coat, insulates against cold weather and is composed of 2 to 3 cm (0.79 to 1.18 in) long hairs.[87]

 

The raccoon, whose method of locomotion is usually considered to be plantigrade, can stand on its hind legs to examine objects with its front paws.[89][90] As raccoons have short legs compared to their compact torso, they are usually not able either to run quickly or jump great distances.[91][92] Their top speed over short distances is 16 to 24 km/h (9.9 to 14.9 mph).[93][94] Raccoons can swim with an average speed of about 5 km/h (3.1 mph) and can stay in the water for several hours.[95][92] For climbing down a tree headfirst—an unusual ability for a mammal of its size—a raccoon rotates its hind feet so they are pointing backwards.[96][92] Raccoons have a dual cooling system to regulate their temperature; that is, they are able to both sweat and pant for heat dissipation.[97][98]

 

Raccoon skulls have a short and wide facial region and a voluminous braincase. The facial length of the skull is less than the cranial, and their nasal bones are short and quite broad. The auditory bullae are inflated in form, and the sagittal crest is weakly developed.[99] The dentition—40 teeth with the dental formula:

3.1.4.2

3.1.4.2

—is adapted to their omnivorous diet: the carnassials are not as sharp and pointed as those of a full-time carnivore, but the molars are not as wide as those of a herbivore.[100] The penis bone of males is about 10 cm (3.9 in) long and strongly bent at the front end,[101][102] and its shape can be used to distinguish juvenile males from mature males.[103][104][105] Seven of the thirteen identified vocal calls are used in communication between the mother and her kits, one of these being the birdlike twittering of newborns.[106][107][98]

 

Senses

The most important sense for the raccoon is its sense of touch.[108][109][110] The "hyper sensitive"[109] front paws are protected by a thin horny layer that becomes pliable when wet.[111][112] The five digits of the paws have no webbing between them, which is unusual for a carnivoran.[113] Almost two-thirds of the area responsible for sensory perception in the raccoon's cerebral cortex is specialized for the interpretation of tactile impulses, more than in any other studied animal.[114] They are able to identify objects before touching them with vibrissae located above their sharp, nonretractable claws.[89][110] The raccoon's paws lack an opposable thumb; thus, it does not have the agility of the hands of primates.[110][112] There is no observed negative effect on tactile perception when a raccoon stands in water below 10 °C (50 °F) for hours.[115]

 

Raccoons are thought to be color blind or at least poorly able to distinguish color, though their eyes are well-adapted for sensing green light.[116][117][118] Although their accommodation of 11 dioptre is comparable to that of humans and they see well in twilight because of the tapetum lucidum behind the retina, visual perception is of subordinate importance to raccoons because of their poor long-distance vision.[119][120][121] In addition to being useful for orientation in the dark, their sense of smell is important for intraspecific communication. Glandular secretions (usually from their anal glands), urine and feces are used for marking.[122][123][124] With their broad auditory range, they can perceive tones up to 50–85 kHz as well as quiet noises, like those produced by earthworms underground.[125][126]

 

Intelligence

Zoologist Clinton Hart Merriam described raccoons as "clever beasts", and that "in certain directions their cunning surpasses that of the fox". The animal's intelligence gave rise to the epithet "sly coon".[127] Only a few studies have been undertaken to determine the mental abilities of raccoons, most of them based on the animal's sense of touch. In a study by the ethologist H. B. Davis in 1908, raccoons were able to open 11 of 13 complex locks in fewer than 10 tries and had no problems repeating the action when the locks were rearranged or turned upside down. Davis concluded that they understood the abstract principles of the locking mechanisms and their learning speed was equivalent to that of rhesus macaques.[128]

 

Studies in 1963, 1973, 1975 and 1992 concentrated on raccoon memory showed that they can remember the solutions to tasks for at least three years.[129] In a study by B. Pohl in 1992, raccoons were able to instantly differentiate between identical and different symbols three years after the short initial learning phase.[129] Stanislas Dehaene reports in his book The Number Sense that raccoons can distinguish boxes containing two or four grapes from those containing three.[130] In research by Suzana Herculano-Houzel and other neuroscientists, raccoons have been found to be comparable to primates in density of neurons in the cerebral cortex, which they have proposed to be a neuroanatomical indicator of intelligence.[131][132]

 

Behavior

Social behavior

 

Eastern raccoons (P. l. lotor) in a tree: The raccoon's social structure is grouped into what Ulf Hohmann calls a "three-class society".

 

California raccoon (P. l. psora) climbing a tree in Lower Klamath National Wildlife Refuge

 

Baby raccoon chatter

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Studies in the 1990s by the ethologists Stanley D. Gehrt and Ulf Hohmann suggest that raccoons engage in sex-specific social behaviors and are not typically solitary, as was previously thought.[133][134] Related females often live in a so-called "fission-fusion society"; that is, they share a common area and occasionally meet at feeding or resting grounds.[135][136] Unrelated males often form loose male social groups to maintain their position against foreign males during the mating season—or against other potential invaders.[137] Such a group does not usually consist of more than four individuals.[138][139] Since some males show aggressive behavior towards unrelated kits, mothers will isolate themselves from other raccoons until their kits are big enough to defend themselves.[140]

 

With respect to these three different modes of life prevalent among raccoons, Hohmann called their social structure a "three-class society".[141] Samuel I. Zeveloff, professor of zoology at Weber State University and author of the book Raccoons: A Natural History, is more cautious in his interpretation and concludes at least the females are solitary most of the time and, according to Erik K. Fritzell's study in North Dakota in 1978, males in areas with low population densities are solitary as well.[142]

 

The shape and size of a raccoon's home range varies depending on age, sex, and habitat, with adults claiming areas more than twice as large as juveniles.[143] While the size of home ranges in the habitat of North Dakota's prairies lie between 7 and 50 km2 (3 and 20 sq mi) for males and between 2 and 16 km2 (1 and 6 sq mi) for females, the average size in a marsh at Lake Erie was 0.5 km2 (0.19 sq mi).[144] Irrespective of whether the home ranges of adjacent groups overlap, they are most likely not actively defended outside the mating season if food supplies are sufficient.[145] Odor marks on prominent spots are assumed to establish home ranges and identify individuals.[124] Urine and feces left at shared raccoon latrines may provide additional information about feeding grounds, since raccoons were observed to meet there later for collective eating, sleeping and playing.[146]

 

Concerning the general behavior patterns of raccoons, Gehrt points out that "typically you'll find 10 to 15 percent that will do the opposite" of what is expected.[147]

 

Diet

Though usually nocturnal, the raccoon is sometimes active in daylight to take advantage of available food sources.[148][149] Its diet consists of about 40% invertebrates, 33% plant material and 27% vertebrates.[150] Since its diet consists of such a variety of different foods, Zeveloff argues the raccoon "may well be one of the world's most omnivorous animals".[151] While its diet in spring and early summer consists mostly of insects, worms, and other animals already available early in the year, it prefers fruits and nuts, such as acorns and walnuts, which emerge in late summer and autumn, and represent a rich calorie source for building up fat needed for winter.[152][153]

 

Contrary to popular belief, raccoons only occasionally eat active or large prey, such as birds and mammals. They prefer prey that is easier to catch, specifically crayfish, insects,[154] fish, amphibians and bird eggs.[155] Raccoons are virulent predators of eggs and hatchlings in both birds and reptile nests, to such a degree that, for threatened prey species, raccoons may need to be removed from the area or nests may need to be relocated to mitigate the effect of their predations (i.e. in the case of some globally threatened turtles).[156][157][158][159][160] When food is plentiful, raccoons can develop strong individual preferences for specific foods.[78] In the northern parts of their range, raccoons go into a winter rest, reducing their activity drastically as long as a permanent snow cover makes searching for food difficult.[161]

 

Dousing

 

Captive raccoons often douse their food before eating.

One aspect of raccoon behavior is so well known that it gives the animal part of its scientific name, Procyon lotor; lotor is Latin for 'washer'. In the wild, raccoons often dabble for underwater food near the shore-line. They then often pick up the food item with their front paws to examine it and rub the item, sometimes to remove unwanted parts. This gives the appearance of the raccoon "washing" the food. The tactile sensitivity of raccoons' paws is increased if this rubbing action is performed underwater, since the water softens the hard layer covering the paws.[109][162] However, the behavior observed in captive raccoons in which they carry their food to water to "wash" or douse it before eating has not been observed in the wild.[163][164] Naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, believed that raccoons do not have adequate saliva production to moisten food thereby necessitating dousing, but this hypothesis is now considered to be incorrect.[162][163][165][166] Captive raccoons douse their food more frequently when a watering hole with a layout similar to a stream is not farther away than 3 m (10 ft).[166] The widely accepted theory is that dousing in captive raccoons is a fixed action pattern from the dabbling behavior performed when foraging at shores for aquatic foods.[162][166][167][168] This is supported by the observation that aquatic foods are doused more frequently. Cleaning dirty food does not seem to be a reason for "washing".[166]

 

Reproduction

Raccoons usually mate in a period triggered by increasing daylight between late January and mid-March.[169][170][171] However, there are large regional differences which are not completely explicable by solar conditions. For example, while raccoons in southern states typically mate later than average, the mating season in Manitoba also peaks later than usual in March and extends until June.[171] During the mating season, males restlessly roam their home ranges in search of females in an attempt to court them during the three- to four-day period when conception is possible. These encounters will often occur at central meeting places.[172][173][174] Copulation, including foreplay, can last over an hour and is repeated over several nights.[175] The weaker members of a male social group also are assumed to get the opportunity to mate, since the stronger ones cannot mate with all available females.[176] In a study in southern Texas during the mating seasons from 1990 to 1992, about one third of all females mated with more than one male.[177] If a female does not become pregnant or if she loses her kits early, she will sometimes become fertile again 80 to 140 days later.[178][179][180]

  

An eastern raccoon (P. l. lotor) kit

After usually 63 to 65 days of gestation (although anywhere from 54 to 70 days is possible), a litter of typically two to five young is born.[181][182] The average litter size varies widely with habitat, ranging from 2.5 in Alabama to 4.8 in North Dakota.[183][184] Larger litters are more common in areas with a high mortality rate, due, for example, to hunting or severe winters.[185][184] While male yearlings usually reach their sexual maturity only after the main mating season, female yearlings can compensate for high mortality rates and may be responsible for about 50% of all young born in a year.[186][187][188] Males have no part in raising young.[138][189][190] The kits (also called "cubs") are blind and deaf at birth, but their mask is already visible against their light fur.[191][192] The birth weight of the about 10 cm (4 in)-long kits is between 60 and 75 g (2.1 and 2.6 oz).[192] Their ear canals open after around 18 to 23 days, a few days before their eyes open for the first time.[193] Once the kits weigh about 1 kg (2 lb), they begin to explore outside the den, consuming solid food for the first time after six to nine weeks.[194][195] After this point, their mother suckles them with decreasing frequency; they are usually weaned by 16 weeks.[196] In the fall, after their mother has shown them dens and feeding grounds, the juvenile group splits up.[197] [198] While many females will stay close to the home range of their mother, males can sometimes move more than 20 km (12 mi) away. This is considered an instinctive behavior, preventing inbreeding. However, mother and offspring may share a den during the first winter in cold areas.

 

Life expectancy

Captive raccoons have been known to live for more than 20 years. However, the species' life expectancy in the wild is only 1.8 to 3.1 years, depending on the local conditions such as traffic volume, hunting, and weather severity. It is not unusual for only half of the young born in one year to survive a full year. After this point, the annual mortality rate drops to between 10% and 30%. Young raccoons are vulnerable to losing their mother and to starvation, particularly in long and cold winters. The most frequent natural cause of death in the North American raccoon population is distemper, which can reach epidemic proportions and kill most of a local raccoon population. In areas with heavy vehicular traffic and extensive hunting, these factors can account for up to 90% of all deaths of adult raccoons. The most important natural predators of the raccoon are bobcats, coyotes, and great horned owls, the latter mainly preying on young raccoons but capable of killing adults in some cases. In Florida, they have been reported to fall victim to larger carnivores like American black bear and cougars and these species may also be a threat on occasion in other areas. Where still present, gray wolves may still occasionally take raccoons as a supplemental prey item. Also in the southeast, they are among the favored prey for adult American alligators. On occasion, both bald and golden eagles will prey on raccoons. In the tropics, raccoons are known to fall prey to smaller eagles such as ornate hawk-eagles and black hawk-eagles, although it is not clear whether adults or merely juvenile raccoons are taken by these. In rare cases of overlap, they may fall victim from carnivores ranging from species averaging smaller than themselves such as fishers to those as large and formidable as jaguars in Mexico. In their introduced range in the former Soviet Union, their main predators are wolves, lynxes and Eurasian eagle-owls. However, predation is not a significant cause of death, especially because larger predators have been exterminated in many areas inhabited by raccoons.

 

Range

Although they have thrived in sparsely wooded areas in the last decades, raccoons depend on vertical structures to climb when they feel threatened. Therefore, they avoid open terrain and areas with high concentrations of beech trees, as beech bark is too smooth to climb. Tree hollows in old oaks or other trees and rock crevices are preferred by raccoons as sleeping, winter and litter dens. If such dens are unavailable or accessing them is inconvenient, raccoons use burrows dug by other mammals, dense undergrowth or tree crotches. In a study in the Solling range of hills in Germany, more than 60% of all sleeping places were used only once, but those used at least ten times accounted for about 70% of all uses. Since amphibians, crustaceans, and other animals around the shore of lakes and rivers are an important part of the raccoon's diet, lowland deciduous or mixed forests abundant with water and marshes sustain the highest population densities. While population densities range from 0.5 to 3.2 animals per square kilometer (1.3 to 8.3 animals per square mile) in prairies and do not usually exceed 6 animals per square kilometer (15.5 animals per square mile) in upland hardwood forests, more than 20 raccoons per square kilometer (51.8 animals per square mile) can live in lowland forests and marshes.

 

Distribution in North America

Raccoons are common throughout North America from Canada to Panama, where the subspecies Procyon lotor pumilus coexists with the crab-eating raccoon (Procyon cancrivorus). The population on Hispaniola was exterminated as early as 1513 by Spanish colonists who hunted them for their meat. Raccoons were also exterminated in Cuba and Jamaica, where the last sightings were reported in 1687. The Barbados raccoon became extinct relatively recently, in 1964. When they were still considered separate species, the Bahamas raccoon, Guadeloupe raccoon and Tres Marias raccoon were classified as endangered by the IUCN in 1996.

  

A Raccoon sleeping on a tree in High Park, Toronto

There is archeological evidence that in pre-Columbian times raccoons were numerous only along rivers and in the woodlands of the Southeastern United States. As raccoons were not mentioned in earlier reports of pioneers exploring the central and north-central parts of the United States, their initial spread may have begun a few decades before the 20th century. Since the 1950s, raccoons have expanded their range from Vancouver Island—formerly the northernmost limit of their range—far into the northern portions of the four south-central Canadian provinces. New habitats which have recently been occupied by raccoons (aside from urban areas) include mountain ranges, such as the Western Rocky Mountains, prairies and coastal marshes. After a population explosion starting in the 1940s, the estimated number of raccoons in North America in the late 1980s was 15 to 20 times higher than in the 1930s, when raccoons were comparatively rare. Urbanization, the expansion of agriculture, deliberate introductions, and the extermination of natural predators of the raccoon have probably caused this increase in abundance and distribution.

 

Distribution outside North America

s a result of escapes and deliberate introductions in the mid-20th century, the raccoon is now distributed in several European and Asian countries. Sightings have occurred in all the countries bordering Germany, which hosts the largest population outside of North America. Another stable population exists in northern France, where several pet raccoons were released by members of the U.S. Air Force near the Laon-Couvron Air Base in 1966. Furthermore, raccoons have been known to be in the area around Madrid since the early 1970s. In 2013, the city authorized "the capture and death of any specimen". It is also present in Italy, with one self-sustaining population in Lombardy.

 

About 1,240 animals were released in nine regions of the former Soviet Union between 1936 and 1958 for the purpose of establishing a population to be hunted for their fur. Two of these introductions were successful – one in the south of Belarus between 1954 and 1958, and another in Azerbaijan between 1941 and 1957. With a seasonal harvest of between 1,000~1,500 animals, in 1974 the estimated size of the population distributed in the Caucasus region was around 20,000 animals and the density was four animals per square kilometer (10 animals per square mile).

 

Distribution in Japan

In Japan, up to 1,500 raccoons were imported as pets each year after the success of the anime series Rascal the Raccoon (1977). In 2004, the descendants of discarded or escaped animals lived in 42 of 47 prefectures. The range of raccoons in the wild in Japan grew from 17 prefectures in 2000 to all 47 prefectures in 2008. It is estimated that raccoons cause thirty million yen (~$275,000) of agricultural damage on Hokkaido alone.

 

Distribution in Germany

In Germany – where the raccoon is called the Waschbär (literally, 'wash-bear' or 'washing bear') due to its habit of "dousing" food in water – two pairs of pet raccoons were released into the German countryside at the Edersee reservoir in the north of Hesse in April 1934 by a forester upon request of their owner, a poultry farmer. He released them two weeks before receiving permission from the Prussian hunting office to "enrich the fauna". Several prior attempts to introduce raccoons in Germany had been unsuccessful. A second population was established in eastern Germany in 1945 when 25 raccoons escaped from a fur farm at Wolfshagen (today district of Altlandsberg), east of Berlin, after an air strike. The two populations are parasitologically distinguishable: 70% of the raccoons of the Hessian population are infected with the roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis, but none of the Brandenburgian population is known to have the parasite. In the Hessian region, there were an estimated 285 raccoons in 1956, which increased to over 20,000 in 1970; in 2008 there were between 200,000 and 400,000 raccoons in the whole of Germany. By 2012 it was estimated that Germany now had more than a million raccoons.

 

The raccoon was once a protected species in Germany, but has been declared a game animal in 14 of the 16 German states since 1954. Hunters and environmentalists argue the raccoon spreads uncontrollably, threatens protected bird species, and supersedes indigenous competitors. This view is opposed by the zoologist Frank-Uwe Michler, who finds no evidence that a high population density of raccoons leads to negative effects on the biodiversity of an area. Hohmann holds that extensive hunting cannot be justified by the absence of natural predators, because predation is not a significant cause of death in the North American raccoon population.

  

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

The raccoon is extensively hunted in Germany as it is seen as an invasive species and pest. In the 1990s, only about 400 raccoons were hunted yearly. This increased dramatically over the next quarter-century: during the 2015–2016 hunting season, 128,100 raccoons were hunted, 60 percent of them in the state of Hesse.

 

Distribution in the former Soviet Union

Experiments in acclimatising raccoons into the Soviet Union began in 1936, and were repeated a further 25 times until 1962. Overall, 1,222 individuals were released, 64 of which came from zoos and fur farms (38 of them having been imports from western Europe). The remainder originated from a population previously established in Transcaucasia. The range of Soviet raccoons was never single or continuous, as they were often introduced to different locations far from each other. All introductions into the Russian Far East failed; melanistic raccoons were released on Petrov Island near Vladivostok and some areas of southern Primorsky Krai, but died. In Middle Asia, raccoons were released in Kyrgyzstan's Jalal-Abad Province, though they were later recorded as "practically absent" there in January 1963. A large and stable raccoon population (yielding 1,000~1,500 catches a year) was established in Azerbaijan after an introduction to the area in 1937. Raccoons apparently survived an introduction near Terek, along the Sulak River into the Dagestani lowlands. Attempts to settle raccoons on the Kuban River's left tributary and Kabardino-Balkaria were unsuccessful. A successful acclimatization occurred in Belarus, where three introductions (consisting of 52, 37, and 38 individuals in 1954 and 1958) took place. By January 1963, 700 individuals were recorded in the country.

 

Urban raccoons

Due to its adaptability, the raccoon has been able to use urban areas as a habitat. The first sightings were recorded in a suburb of Cincinnati in the 1920s. Since the 1950s, raccoons have been present in metropolitan areas like Washington, DC, Chicago, Toronto, and New York City. Since the 1960s, Kassel has hosted Europe's first and densest population in a large urban area, with about 50 to 150 animals per square kilometer (130 to 390 animals per square mile), a figure comparable to those of urban habitats in North America. Home range sizes of urban raccoons are only 3 to 40 hectares (7.5 to 100 acres) for females and 8 to 80 hectares (20 to 200 acres) for males. In small towns and suburbs, many raccoons sleep in a nearby forest after foraging in the settlement area. Fruit and insects in gardens and leftovers in municipal waste are easily available food sources. Furthermore, a large number of additional sleeping areas exist in these areas, such as hollows in old garden trees, cottages, garages, abandoned houses, and attics. The percentage of urban raccoons sleeping in abandoned or occupied houses varies from 15% in Washington, DC (1991) to 43% in Kassel (2003).

 

Health

Raccoons can carry rabies, a lethal disease caused by the neurotropic rabies virus carried in the saliva and transmitted by bites. Its spread began in Florida and Georgia in the 1950s and was facilitated by the introduction of infected individuals to Virginia and North Dakota in the late 1970s. Of the 6,940 documented rabies cases reported in the United States in 2006, 2,615 (37.7%) were in raccoons. The U.S. Department of Agriculture, as well as local authorities in several U.S. states and Canadian provinces, has developed oral vaccination programs to fight the spread of the disease in endangered populations. Only one human fatality has been reported after transmission of the rabies virus strain commonly known as "raccoon rabies". Among the main symptoms for rabies in raccoons are a generally sickly appearance, impaired mobility, abnormal vocalization, and aggressiveness. There may be no visible signs at all, however, and most individuals do not show the aggressive behavior seen in infected canids; rabid raccoons will often retire to their dens instead. Organizations like the U.S. Forest Service encourage people to stay away from animals with unusual behavior or appearance, and to notify the proper authorities, such as an animal control officer from the local health department. Since healthy animals, especially nursing mothers, will occasionally forage during the day, daylight activity is not a reliable indicator of illness in raccoons.

 

Unlike rabies and at least a dozen other pathogens carried by raccoons, distemper, an epizootic virus, does not affect humans. This disease is the most frequent natural cause of death in the North American raccoon population and affects individuals of all age groups. For example, 94 of 145 raccoons died during an outbreak in Clifton, Ohio, in 1968. It may occur along with a following inflammation of the brain (encephalitis), causing the animal to display rabies-like symptoms. In Germany, the first eight cases of distemper were reported in 2007.

 

Some of the most important bacterial diseases which affect raccoons are leptospirosis, listeriosis, tetanus, and tularemia. Although internal parasites weaken their immune systems, well-fed individuals can carry a great many roundworms in their digestive tracts without showing symptoms. The larvae of the roundworm Baylisascaris procyonis, which can be contained in the feces and seldom causes a severe illness in humans, can be ingested when cleaning raccoon latrines without wearing breathing protection.

 

While not endemic, the worm Trichinella does infect raccoons, and undercooked raccoon meat has caused trichinosis in humans.

 

Trematode Metorchis conjunctus can also infect raccoons.

 

Relationship with humans

Raccoons have become notorious in urban areas for consuming food waste. They possess impressive problem-solving abilities and can break into all but the most secure food waste bins, which has earned them the derisive nickname trash panda. The presence of raccoons in close proximity to humans may be undesirable, as raccoon droppings (like most wild animals) contain parasites and other disease vectors. Raccoon roundworm is of particular concern to public health. It can be contracted in humans by accidental ingestion or inhalation of the eggs, which are present in the feces of infected raccoons. While usually harmless to the host, it causes progressive neurological damage in humans, and is eventually fatal if untreated. It is found in about 60% of adult raccoons. The general presence of raccoons in an area is not typically of concern, but nests or droppings found within or near structures should be destroyed. Roundworm eggs are very robust and bleach alone is insufficient; burning or treatment with hot solutions of sodium hydroxide is required. The keeping of raccoons as pets is illegal in some jurisdictions due to these risks.

 

The increasing number of raccoons in urban areas has resulted in diverse reactions in humans, ranging from outrage at their presence to deliberate feeding. Some wildlife experts and most public authorities caution against feeding wild animals because they might become increasingly obtrusive and dependent on humans as a food source. Other experts challenge such arguments and give advice on feeding raccoons and other wildlife in their books. Raccoons without a fear of humans are a concern to those who attribute this trait to rabies, but scientists point out this behavior is much more likely to be a behavioral adjustment to living in habitats with regular contact to humans for many generations. Raccoons usually do not prey on domestic cats and dogs, but isolated cases of killings have been reported. Attacks on pets may also target their owners.

  

A Florida raccoon (P. l. elucus) in the Everglades approaches a group of humans, hoping to be fed

While overturned waste containers and raided fruit trees are just a nuisance to homeowners, it can cost several thousand dollars to repair damage caused by the use of attic space as dens. Relocating or killing raccoons without a permit is forbidden in many urban areas on grounds of animal welfare. These methods usually only solve problems with particularly wild or aggressive individuals, since adequate dens are either known to several raccoons or will quickly be rediscovered. Loud noises, flashing lights, and unpleasant odors have proven particularly effective in driving away a mother and her kits before they would normally leave the nesting place (when the kits are about eight weeks old). Typically, though, only precautionary measures to restrict access to food waste and den sites are effective in the long term.

 

Among all fruits and crops cultivated in agricultural areas, sweet corn in its milk stage is particularly popular among raccoons.[309][310] In a two-year study by Purdue University researchers, published in 2004, raccoons were responsible for 87% of the damage to corn plants. Like other predators, raccoons searching for food can break into poultry houses to feed on chickens, ducks, their eggs, or food.

 

Mythology, arts, and entertainment

In the mythology of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, the raccoon is the subject of folk tales. Stories such as "How raccoons catch so many crayfish" from the Tuscarora centered on its skills at foraging. In other tales, the raccoon played the role of the trickster which outsmarts other animals, like coyotes and wolves. Among others, the Dakota believe the raccoon has natural spirit powers, since its mask resembles the facial paintings, two-fingered swashes of black and white, used during rituals to connect to spirit beings. The Aztecs linked supernatural abilities especially to females, whose commitment to their young was associated with the role of wise women in their society.

 

The raccoon also appears in Native American art across a wide geographic range. Petroglyphs with engraved raccoon tracks were found in Lewis Canyon, Texas; at the Crow Hollow petroglyph site in Grayson County, Kentucky; and in river drainages near Tularosa, the San Francisco River of New Mexico and Arizona. The meaning and significance of the Raccoon Priests Gorget, which features a stylized carving of a raccoon and was found at the Spiro Mounds, Oklahoma, remains unknown.

 

Hunting and fur trade

The fur of raccoons is used for clothing, especially for coats and coonskin caps. At present, it is the material used for the inaccurately named "sealskin" cap worn by the Royal Fusiliers of Great Britain. Sporrans made of raccoon pelt and hide have sometimes been used as part of traditional Scottish highland men's apparel since the 18th century, especially in North America. Such sporrans may or may not be of the "full-mask" type. Historically, Native American tribes not only used the fur for winter clothing, but also used the tails for ornament. The famous Sioux leader Spotted Tail took his name from a raccoon skin hat with the tail attached he acquired from a fur trader. Since the late 18th century, various types of scent hounds, called coonhounds, which are able to tree animals have been bred in the United States. In the 19th century, when coonskins occasionally even served as means of payment, several thousand raccoons were killed each year in the United States. This number rose quickly when automobile coats became popular after the turn of the 20th century. In the 1920s, wearing a raccoon coat was regarded as status symbol among college students. Attempts to breed raccoons in fur farms in the 1920s and 1930s in North America and Europe turned out not to be profitable, and farming was abandoned after prices for long-haired pelts dropped in the 1940s. Although raccoons had become rare in the 1930s, at least 388,000 were killed during the hunting season of 1934–1935.

 

After persistent population increases began in the 1940s, the seasonal coon hunting harvest reached about one million animals in 1946–1947 and two million in 1962–1963. The broadcast of three television episodes about the frontiersman Davy Crockett and the film Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier in 1954 and 1955 led to a high demand for coonskin caps in the United States, although it is unlikely either Crockett or the actor who played him, Fess Parker, actually wore a cap made from raccoon fur. The seasonal hunt reached an all-time high with 5.2 million animals in 1976–1977 and ranged between 3.2 and 4.7 million for most of the 1980s. In 1982, the average pelt price was $20. As of 1987, the raccoon was identified as the most important wild furbearer in North America in terms of revenue. In the first half of the 1990s, the seasonal hunt dropped to 0.9 from 1.9 million due to decreasing pelt prices.

 

Food

While primarily hunted for their fur, raccoons were also a source of food for Native Americans and early American settlers. According to Ernest Thompson Seton, young specimens killed without a fight are palatable, whereas old raccoons caught after a lengthy battle are inedible. Raccoon meat was extensively eaten during the early years of California, where it was sold in the San Francisco market for $1–3 apiece. American slaves occasionally ate raccoon at Christmas, but it was not necessarily a dish of the poor or rural. The first edition of The Joy of Cooking, released in 1931, contained a recipe for preparing raccoon, and US President Calvin Coolidge's pet raccoon Rebecca was originally sent to be served at the White House Thanksgiving Dinner.

 

Although the idea of eating raccoons may seem repulsive to most mainstream consumers, who see them as endearing, cute, or vermin, several thousand raccoons are still eaten each year in the United States, primarily in the Southern United States. Some people tout the taste of the meat.

 

Other uses

In addition to the fur and meat, the raccoon baculum (penis bone) have had numerous traditional uses in the Southern United States and beyond. Indigenous people used the bones as a pipe cleaning tool. The bones were used by moonshine distillers to guide the flow of whiskey from the drip tube to the bottle. With their tips filed down, the bones were used as toothpicks under the moniker "coon rods". In hoodoo, the folk magic of the American South, the baculum is sometimes worn as an amulet for love or luck. The bones also have decorative uses (e.g. on the trademark hat of stock car racer Richard Petty or as earrings by actresses Sarah Jessica Parker and Vanessa Williams).

 

Pet raccoons

Raccoons are sometimes kept as pets, which is discouraged by many experts because the raccoon is not a domesticated species. Raccoons may act unpredictably and aggressively and it is extremely difficult to teach them to obey commands. In places where keeping raccoons as pets is not forbidden, such as in Wisconsin and other U.S. states, an exotic pet permit may be required. One notable pet raccoon was Rebecca, kept by US president Calvin Coolidge.

 

Their propensity for unruly behavior exceeds that of captive skunks, and they are even less trustworthy when allowed to roam freely. Because of their intelligence and nimble forelimbs, even inexperienced raccoons are easily capable of unscrewing jars, uncorking bottles and opening door latches, with more experienced specimens having been recorded to open door knobs. Sexually mature raccoons often show aggressive natural behaviors such as biting during the mating season. Neutering them at around five or six months of age decreases the chances of aggressive behavior developing. Raccoons can become obese and suffer from other disorders due to poor diet and lack of exercise. When fed with cat food over a long time period, raccoons can develop gout. With respect to the research results regarding their social behavior, it is now required by law in Austria and Germany to keep at least two individuals to prevent loneliness. Raccoons are usually kept in a pen (indoor or outdoor), also a legal requirement in Austria and Germany, rather than in the apartment where their natural curiosity may result in damage to property.

 

When orphaned, it is possible for kits to be rehabilitated and reintroduced to the wild. However, it is uncertain whether they readapt well to life in the wild. Feeding unweaned kits with cow's milk rather than a kitten replacement milk or a similar product can be dangerous to their health.

ATLANTA, GEORGIA - OCTOBER 26: Kim "Deft" Hyuk-kyu of DRX poses at the League of Legends World Championship Semifinals Features Day on October 26, 2022 in Atlanta, GA. (Photo by Fernando Decillis/Riot Games)

The photo features a striking nighttime panorama of Shanghai's Lujiazui area, highlighting the city's architectural prowess with towering skyscrapers adorned in colorful lights. Prominent structures such as the Oriental Pearl Tower and the Jin Mao Tower stand out against the dark sky, while the red Monument to the People's Heroes adds a splash of color to the urban landscape. The steel truss of Waibaidu bridge in the foreground provides a sense of scale and depth, leading the viewer's eye across the water towards the cityscape. The overall mood is one of awe-inspiring modernity and cultural significance, encapsulating the dynamic energy of China's financial hub.

 

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© Philippe LEJEANVRE. All rights reserved.

  

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Please do not use this photo without my permission.

You may be interested in viewing the blog post that features this picture: blogs.loc.gov/picturethis/2015/10/work-horses-pulling-the...

 

About this picture:

Title: Logs being hauled on a sleigh by a team of horses along the government railway, 35 miles from Seward

Date: [between ca. 1900 and ca. 1930]

 

Notes:

Title transcribed from caption accompanying item.

Forms part of: Frank and Frances Carpenter collection (Library of Congress). More information about the Carpenter Collection is available at www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/ffcarp/

Gift; Mrs. W. Chapin Huntington; 1951.

 

Subjects:

Horse teams--Alaska--1890-1940.

Logs--Alaska--1890-1940.

Lumber industry--Alaska--1890-1940.

United States--Alaska

Format: photographic print.

Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.

Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

 

Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.01617

 

Call Number: LOT 11453-1, no. 62

  

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - NOVEMBER 02: Lee "Gumayusi" Min-hyeong of T1 poses at the League of Legends World Championship Finals Features Day on November 2, 2022 in San Francisco, CA. (Photo by Lance Skundrich/Riot Games)

•Set includes a spring-loaded Spell Launcher with fiery shots, disguised as a craggy rock

•Push the button on the Frost Dragon’s back and make her head strike downward

This week's Saturday Timewatch features a locomotive with quite a varied life. The photo above shows TKh 5387 going across an unmanned crossing at Vierves-sur-Viroi, Belgium, hauling the afternoon passenger service from Mariembourg to Treignes on the heritage Chemin de fer a vapeur des 3 vavallees (Three Valleys Steam Railway).

 

There are many details of her life that I cannot answer. However, the 0-6-0T locomotive was built in Poland in 1959, destined for work at the Cementownia Saturn (Saturn Cement Plant) Wojkowice, Poland. I do not know when that work came to an end. At some stage she then found herself in England, being a resident at the Northampton and Lamport Railway, though whether this was directly from Poland or via a stint in Belgium again I do not know. What is clear is that in more recent years she has been based at Maldegem Stoomcentrum, Belgium, but is now to loan to Three Valleys Steam Railway.

 

Two asides :

# 1 The volunteer on the footplate had just got back on board having used a 'flag' to ensure a safe crossing of the road.

#2 A close relative TKh 2944 (built earlier in 1952) currently runs at Churnet Valley Railway, Staffordshire.