4000+ fine-art prints suitable for framing. Desk-size to sofa-size and larger, on archival paper or canvas.
The Shorpy Gallery
Join and Share
Social Shorpy
To love him is to like him. Our goal: 100k "likes":
Recent comments
- Role reversal
- Hot metal to cold type
- Had them at Lane Tech in 1980
- Re: etaoin shrdlu
- I had to learn to use one of these
- The Gnarly Cottonwood
- A vanished brand
- The extra doors
- What impressive machines
- Over the shoulder horn.
- The Wild West
- Lemonolyuf
- Fill the pointy thing with sand
- Hugh Hefner
- An otherworldly appearance
- Read any magazines?
- Sweater Girl
- Party of six
- Interesting Comment
- She Gives
- Missing?
- Hefty
- High School Confidential
- Fast forward 50 years
- Dutch Oven
- The Spitoon
- etaoin shrdlu
- Is that all?
- A Hallowed Mess (Hall)
- Lead mule for the yearbook
Member Photos
Photos submitted by Shorpy members.
Colorized Photos
Colorized photos submitted by members.
About the Photos
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.) Many 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.
Image Galleries
Search Shorpy
Yellow Rows of Texas: 1943
Submitted by Dave on Sat, 11/17/2007 - 5:25pm.
Tags:
Extracted sulfur stacked in a "vat" 60 feet tall at Freeport Sulphur Co. in Hoskins Mound, Texas. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by John Vachon.
Hoskins Mound, Texas
Submitted by Anonymous Tipster on Fri, 12/28/2007 - 2:51pm.
There is little remaining at the site of the Freeport Sulphur Company's sulfur mine at Hoskins Mound. The surrounding Gulf Coast prairie stretches for miles and miles. It is desolate and unpopulated even though it is about 50 miles south of Houston. Its few remaining facilities are inaccessible behind locked gates and threatening "No Trespassing" signs.
This facility used extremely pressurized saltwater steam to melt and extract the sulfur from the earth. This brine, or the extracted sulfur, or both, continues to be a potent herbicide. The facility is surrounded by a waist high blanket of local grasses and vegetation, but its grounds are still bare, baked and lifeless.
A railroad spur once connected this sulfur plant to nearby Freeport. Its crumbling remains are easily seen. I am glad John Vachon photographed the plant during it heyday.
THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG
Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
RSS | Contact Us | Privacy Policy | Photo Use | © 2013 Shorpy Inc.
Today's Top 5