Most of the photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs, 20 to 200 megabytes in size) from the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) Most were digitized by LOC contractors using a Sinar studio back. They are adjusted by your webmaster for contrast and color in Photoshop before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here.
Shorpy is an online archive of thousands of high-resolution photos from the 1850s to 1950s. Our namesake, Shorpy Higginbotham, was a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
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September 1938. Racine, West Virginia. "Farmer's son who helps make sorghum molasses from sugarcane." Photo by Marion Post Wolcott. View full size.

July 1940. "Cabins imitating the Indian teepee for tourists along highway south of Bardstown, Kentucky. (Wigwam Village #2, Cave City)." Medium format negative by Marion Post Wolcott for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.

August 1940. Pine Mountain, Kentucky. Marion Post Wolcott on assignment for the Resettlement Administration at the Stinking Creek home of the "mountain woman" in the previous post. Medium-format nitrate negative. View full size.

August 1940. Pine Mountain, Kentucky. "Mountain woman by her home up Stinking Creek." Nitrate negative by Marion Post Wolcott. View full size.

September 1941. Sheldon Springs, Vermont. "Feeding machine that grinds wood into pulp, one of the last stages in making paper at the Mississquoi Corporation mill." Medium-format nitrate negative by Jack Delano. View full size.

August 1941. "The family of Gottlieb Zahler in their new farm in Lacona, New York, to which they moved from the Pine Camp relocation area." Medium-format negative by Jack Delano for the Resettlement Administration. View full size.

January 1942. Guanica, Puerto Rico. "Burning a sugar cane field. This process destroys the leaves and makes the cane easier to harvest." Medium-format safety negative by Jack Delano for the Office of War Information. View full size.