It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about the project. There was a flurry of photography back in 2010 when I traveled among the original 13 colonies photographing all the National Parks and State Historic Sites. If there was opportunity, I also photographed lesser well-known sites.
I found it interesting that some locations were now neighborhoods or dense urban living areas, and some areas were still hidden in deep woods. By traveling from Vermont to Georgia, I developed an appreciation for the distances that men, women, children, horses, and oxen traveled by foot, often in horrible weather conditions.
Back in 2010, I had every intention of publishing the project but my programmer that started with me became unavailable and my virtual tour business was increasing for me at Panospin360 so resumption of the project had to wait until this year.
I consider it good that the pandemic forced so many activities onto the Internet. Having a lot of downtime this past year has helped me to refocus on my priorities and values of education, photography, and travel. I’ve also met really smart and dedicated history lovers and I’m grateful that Christine, Amanda, Shoshana, and Mallory are among the first to join me resuming this Virtual Americana train ride.
All along, I had wanted to make this project be a not-for-profit endeavor and to include the efforts of many people and this wonderful direction is currently being realized. Also, recently, I’ve become more aware that the mainstream stories of history often do not include the stories of minorities, under-presented viewpoints, and marginalized people. It is the hope and aspiration of our organization to do our part in addressing these historical viewpoints by adding the stories of women, minorities, slaves and all other non-mainstream populations and diasporas, all over the world.
We are lovers of history and our first efforts are focused on the American Revolutionary War, or as the British named it, the War of American Independence, our insurrection against the King of England. Other projects we’d like to explore in Virtual Americana include The Lewis and Clark trail, the California Gold Rush, the Trail of Tears, the Underground Railroad, the Japanese-American Internment, and many others.
We would love to get your input in letting us know what lesser well-known stories need to be told!
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