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.

Construction at the Tennessee Valley Authority's Douglas Dam, June 1942. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer.
They could have been the beginning of AT-ATs.
The dam was built to provide power to Oak Ridge for the Manhattan Project, whose factories produced the materials used in the atomic bomb. Astonishingly built in only 13 months.
Today's Top 5