Author: Ms. R.

Lew Wallace chose this place because of its proximity to his home. The home is owned by private parties and cannot be visited. However, his son kept the property that included his study, Carriage House, along with well-kept trees, gardens, and statuary. His forethought is the reason this location can be accessed by the public today. Wallace is often referred to as an innovator. When designing and building the study, he included items that were relatively unknown at that……

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This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center. Haywood Joiner Sr. was wandering about Lee Street, the bustling artery abutting the Black district of Alexandria, Louisiana. It was Saturday, January 10, 1942, a little over a month after Pearl Harbor. Hundreds of Black soldiers like Joiner were strolling in and out of bars and nightclubs, all under the watchful gaze of members of the predominantly white military police. Then there was a spark. It’s not clear why,……

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Reagan Wytsalucy grew up in Gallup, New Mexico, just outside the Navajo Nation reservation. Despite her Native heritage, she grew up “very absorbed into westernized culture,” she says. Her father owned several McDonald’s franchises on the reservation, and she never learned to speak the language. It wasn’t until she started to study plant sciences in college that her father told her about the peaches that once thrived on the reservation where he grew up. Centuries ago, the Navajo people……

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This little bakery is the oldest in Texas. In business since 1868, it still sells authentic German baked goods in downtown New Braunfels (originally a German settlement). The extensive offerings include coffee cakes, cookies, pies, and the famous apple strudel, along with other offerings whose flavors will take you back in time: The owners say the strudel recipe is unchanged since the 1800s, and the brownies have a distinctly old-fashioned cocoa flavor. The bakery began when Edouard Naegelin, a German……

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At the bottom of Devil’s Gap Road lie a series of steps painted in red, and blue, to celebrate the outcome of Gibraltar‘s first Sovereign Referendum in 1967. These steps are known locally as the Union Jack or Referendum Steps. Along with simply painted steps in the three colours, the steps also are painted with a Union Jack (the flag of the United Kingdom) as well as a reference to Queen Elizabeth II.  The referendum on September 10, 1967,……

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Hidden in a public park behind the narrow streets of Villaviciosa de Odón stands this somber-looking castle.  Built in the early 15th-century, the castle is not far from where the settlement of Calatalifa once stood, which controlled movements up and down the Guadarrama river amid forests and renowned hunting grounds. In its long life, the castle endured sieges, served as a prison (famously for Manuel Godoy, prime minister and the queen’s lover), and garrison. It also acted as a……

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The Smithfield Schoolhouse Museum, a historic Rosenwald Schoolhouse, was originally constructed in 1932 as an addition to the Christian Home School. Julius Rosenwald, a former president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, contributed $4.3 million along with $4.7 million raised by Black communities to build over 5,000 schools across the south for the education of Black children.  The Christian Home School was moved to its current location in historic Smithfield in February 2005 to be renovated and opened as a……

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El Salto del Agua (the jumping water) waterfall and the large cave behind it have an esteemed literary legacy. It inspired D. H. Lawrence’s 1924 short story “The Woman Who Rode Away,” and it was also the model for the Stone Lips cave in Willa Cather’s novel Death Comes for the Archbishop, published in 1927. During the summer months, the waterfall may dwindle to a trickle, but with the summer monsoons it can burst forth. During winter the waterfall……

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