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Caption: "Circus Parade -- Santa Rosa, Calif.," c. 1905. This image shows several elephants walking down a street in Santa Rosa, part of the Ringling Brothers Circus, which first came to Santa Rosa in 1903. The traveling circus became an annual event in the town for the next two decades.

Date: 1905

Caption: "Woolworth Bldg. Broadway, N.Y. Aug. 8, 1934." Bird's eye view of a portion of New York City, with the Woolworth Building at the left. Constructed between 1910 and 1920 and designed by architect Cass Gilbert, the Neo-Gothic building was once the tallest in the world at 792 feet.

Date: 8/8/1934

Caption: "Glacier Point Hotel," c. 1917. The 80-room chalet-style Glacier Point Hotel opened in 1918, located 3,218 feet above the floor of Yosemite Valley on Glacier Point. This photograph shows the back side of the building, with a viewing porch that looked out over the valley. The building was destroyed by an electrical fire in July 1969.

Date: 1917

Caption: "Nudist Colony - San Diego Exposition," c. 1935. The Zoro Garden Nudist Colony, named for the Persian mystic, Zoroaster, was an unusual and controversial attraction that featured partially nude men and women performing as nudists. Exposition visitors were charged twenty-five cents to watch the "nudists" perform ceremonies and other activities. Today, the sunken Zoro Garden in Balboa Park is a butterfly garden.

Date: 1935

No caption. Commemorative stamp celebrating the upcoming Golden Gate International Exposition, c. 1938. The Exposition, which ran from February through October in 1939 and May to September in 1940, celebrated the completion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge (1936) and the Golden Gate Bridge (1937). More than ten million people attended in 1939, while an additional five million visited in 1940. The Exposition was held on an artificial island created by dredging more than 19 million cubic yards of material from the bottom of the bay. The federal government completed this dredging and fill, intending for the site, called Treasure Island, to become a municipal airport after the exposition. However, the advent of World War II resulted in the U.S. Navy taking over the site, holding it until for military purposes until 1997.

Date: 1938

Caption: "Gatling Gun," c. 1905. William McCarthy sitting in the operator's position of a Gatling gun, an early rapid-fire, crank-turned weapon first used during combat in the Civil War. Developed in 1861 by Dr. Richard J. Gatling, the weapon was commonly used during the late nineteenth century before being superseded by newer, more modern guns.

Date: 1905

Caption: "Mrs Eliza Smart and Family -- Chattahoochee, Florida, June 22, 34." Eliza Smart (standing in the back) and nine unidentified children, posing under a tree for the photograph. This is one of the few photographs in which the McCarthys identified the people who they met along their travels.

Date: 6/22/1934

No caption, c. 1915. Twelve-inch disappearing coastal defense gun, showing the breech of the barrel where shells are loaded and ejected. Retracting or disappearing guns were a form of artillery developed in the nineteenth century in which heavy artillery guns were placed on rotating carriages that allowed retraction of the weapon after firing, to enable reloading while under enemy fire.

Date: 1915

Caption: "Washington Monument," c. 1920. Built between 1848 and 1888 to commemorate George Washington (former Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army and first President of the United States), the obelisk is the world's tallest stone structure at a height of 555 feet. See also 96-07-08-alb09-212.

Date: 1920

Caption: "Portola Celebration,"1909. The Portola Festival of 1909 was a grand celebration devised to commemorate the discovery of San Francisco Bay by Gaspar De Portola, and for the public to celebrate the future of the rebuilt city after the 1906 earthquake and fires.

Date: 1909