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The story of the creation of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Streetwise - Birth of a Bridge
by Frank Dunnigan Frank Dunnigan, WNP member and columnist. -
From the mid-1840s, when Captain John Fremont declared California’s independence from Mexico, local land speculators were eyeing the hills of today s Marin County, and wondering just how the area could be linked to the community of Yerba Buena, as San Francisco was then known for both public and personal benefit. A bridge was the ideal solution, but the swift currents and the depth of the waters at the entrance to San Francisco Bay, along with other factors, presented insurmountable challenges for decades.
Most Americans can tell you about a family member who served.
Most Americans can tell you about a family member who served in Vietnam, or Korea, or World War II – some can even speak of relatives who fought in World War I (known as The Great War to those old enough to recall it).
Did your ancestors serve in the American Civil War? Let us know if the comments below.
But how many people do you know can speak in great detail about the exploits and military experiences of an ancestor who fought in The Civil War over 150 years ago?
There’s a certain awful symmetry in politics. For the Republican Party, that symmetry appears to be violence in the Capitol on one end of history, marking the party’s national ascendancy and on the other, signifying its present unraveling.
On May 22, 1856, pro-slavery, Democratic Rep. Preston Brooks of South Carolina attacked Republican Sen. Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in the Senate chamber. Pummeling Sumner with his cane, Brooks was livid that Sumner had decried the efforts of Brooks’s relative, South Carolina Sen. Andrew Butler, to admit the Kansas territory into the union as a slave state.
In the wake of the caning, public opinion divided along sectional lines. While the House of Representatives eventually would censure him, Brooks was unrepentant and his fellow southerners believed he had done “exactly right,” as Stephen Puleo recounted in “The Caning: The Assault The Drove America to Civil War.” Horrified and dismayed, northerners thought Brooks a “
February is
Black History Month, it’s something that no American of any race, color, or creed should forget. African Americans, the decendants of slaves and slaves themselves fought for freedom that was only at best was in the
promissory note of the
Emancipation Proclamation.
Those men, and women in the case of Harriett Tubman and Sojourner Truth, paved the way for freedom for African Americans and all others who benefited from what they fought for: women, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and other Hispanics, Asian Americans, and LGBTQ Americans.
That promise being made then, must be kept today, to the descendents of this men, as well as all who benefited through their sacrifice: even the Southern Whites who at the time did not know then, or all too often today, that they too needed emancipation.
When Brigham Young and his fellow pioneers descended the Wasatch Mountains and took their first look at the Great Salt Lake, one of the primary features of their view would have been Antelope Island. This forty-two square mile island has an important spot on the horizon looking west from Salt Lake City.
European settlers were not the first to see this island. Native Americans had already inhabited and visited Antelope Island for thousands of years. Besides Native Americans, the first group to visit Antelope Island included John Fremont in 1845. Fremont would name this island after the game animal he harvested during that trip. For a decade or so after the new settlers appeared, the island provided forage for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saintsâ herds of cows and sheep. Before the beginning of the 20th century, however, this land had been ceded into private ownership. That started to change in 1969 when the state bought a few square miles of the northern part of the