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.
Vintage photos of:

Visitors at Marshall Hall, 1893. View full size. Photo by William Cruikshank. Marshall Hall, an estate and ferry stop across the Potomac from Mount Vernon, was a popular picnic and concert destination for day-trippers from Washington.

15-year-old sweeper in the spinning and spooling room of Berkshire Cotton Mills. Adams, Massachusetts. July 10, 1916. View full size. Photo by Lewis Hine.

Santa Fe freight about to leave for the West Coast from the Corwith Yard at Chicago. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano. This is the freight Jack accompanied from Chicago to California in March 1943, taking many pictures along the way for the Office of War Information.

Classification yard at the Chicago & North Western Proviso Yard. December 1942. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

General view of one of the Chicago and North Western railroad yards at Chicago. December 1942. View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Jack Delano.

"African American high school girl being educated via television during the period that the Little Rock (Arkansas) schools were closed to avoid integration." September 1958. View full size. Photograph by Thomas J. O'Halloran, USNWR.

Deadwood, South Dakota, from Forest Hill. View full size. Circa 1888 photograph by John C.H. Grabill.