LAWLESS: LOVING IT AND NOT IN SOUTH FLORIDA For the traveler—and the local, too—there’s a sort of lawlessness—a coast-to-coast sensation—when you’re in South Florida, below the Lake Okeechobee shoreline. Our guide—Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, published by the WPA in 1939—says it in plain words: “Florida is at once a continuation of the Deep South and the beginning of a new realm.” And in that new realm, you do whatever the hell it is you want to do. You see it in the faces of those just passing through to the faces of the snowbird, the country cracker, the Miccosukee, the Cuban, the black American—anyone and everyone. But, it’s not that you’re up to no good if you’re in these parts. No, because down here you’ve either been left to yourself or abandoned outright—something you either fought for and won or fought against and lost. That’s the prettiness and the ugliness of the place. Just ask our guide: “Throughout more than four centuries, from Ponce de Leon in his caravels to the latest Pennsylvanian in his Buick”—You can throw in Walt Disney, HMO-barons, spring-break bros and hoes, and sub-prime mortgage lenders—”Florida has been invaded by seekers of gold or of sunshine. The result of all of this is a material and immaterial pattern of infinite variety, replete with contrasts, paradoxes, confusions, and inconsistencies.” “Seekers of gold or of sunshine”—that’s a damn fine line to walk: between the Freedom—with a capital F—that we all seek and the temptations and trappings of its pursuit. It’s all the “seekers of gold or of sunshine” where that lawless feeling comes from. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of THE AMERICAN GUIDE. 
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LAWLESS: LOVING IT AND NOT IN SOUTH FLORIDA For the traveler—and the local, too—there’s a sort of lawlessness—a coast-to-coast sensation—when you’re in South Florida, below the Lake Okeechobee shoreline. Our guide—Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, published by the WPA in 1939—says it in plain words: “Florida is at once a continuation of the Deep South and the beginning of a new realm.” And in that new realm, you do whatever the hell it is you want to do. You see it in the faces of those just passing through to the faces of the snowbird, the country cracker, the Miccosukee, the Cuban, the black American—anyone and everyone. But, it’s not that you’re up to no good if you’re in these parts. No, because down here you’ve either been left to yourself or abandoned outright—something you either fought for and won or fought against and lost. That’s the prettiness and the ugliness of the place. Just ask our guide: “Throughout more than four centuries, from Ponce de Leon in his caravels to the latest Pennsylvanian in his Buick”—You can throw in Walt Disney, HMO-barons, spring-break bros and hoes, and sub-prime mortgage lenders—”Florida has been invaded by seekers of gold or of sunshine. The result of all of this is a material and immaterial pattern of infinite variety, replete with contrasts, paradoxes, confusions, and inconsistencies.” “Seekers of gold or of sunshine”—that’s a damn fine line to walk: between the Freedom—with a capital F—that we all seek and the temptations and trappings of its pursuit. It’s all the “seekers of gold or of sunshine” where that lawless feeling comes from. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of THE AMERICAN GUIDE. 
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LAWLESS: LOVING IT AND NOT IN SOUTH FLORIDA For the traveler—and the local, too—there’s a sort of lawlessness—a coast-to-coast sensation—when you’re in South Florida, below the Lake Okeechobee shoreline. Our guide—Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, published by the WPA in 1939—says it in plain words: “Florida is at once a continuation of the Deep South and the beginning of a new realm.” And in that new realm, you do whatever the hell it is you want to do. You see it in the faces of those just passing through to the faces of the snowbird, the country cracker, the Miccosukee, the Cuban, the black American—anyone and everyone. But, it’s not that you’re up to no good if you’re in these parts. No, because down here you’ve either been left to yourself or abandoned outright—something you either fought for and won or fought against and lost. That’s the prettiness and the ugliness of the place. Just ask our guide: “Throughout more than four centuries, from Ponce de Leon in his caravels to the latest Pennsylvanian in his Buick”—You can throw in Walt Disney, HMO-barons, spring-break bros and hoes, and sub-prime mortgage lenders—”Florida has been invaded by seekers of gold or of sunshine. The result of all of this is a material and immaterial pattern of infinite variety, replete with contrasts, paradoxes, confusions, and inconsistencies.” “Seekers of gold or of sunshine”—that’s a damn fine line to walk: between the Freedom—with a capital F—that we all seek and the temptations and trappings of its pursuit. It’s all the “seekers of gold or of sunshine” where that lawless feeling comes from. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of THE AMERICAN GUIDE. 
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LAWLESS: LOVING IT AND NOT IN SOUTH FLORIDA

For the traveler—and the local, too—there’s a sort of lawlessness—a coast-to-coast sensation—when you’re in South Florida, below the Lake Okeechobee shoreline.

Our guide—Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State, published by the WPA in 1939—says it in plain words: “Florida is at once a continuation of the Deep South and the beginning of a new realm.”

And in that new realm, you do whatever the hell it is you want to do. You see it in the faces of those just passing through to the faces of the snowbird, the country cracker, the Miccosukee, the Cuban, the black American—anyone and everyone.

But, it’s not that you’re up to no good if you’re in these parts. No, because down here you’ve either been left to yourself or abandoned outright—something you either fought for and won or fought against and lost. That’s the prettiness and the ugliness of the place.

Just ask our guide: “Throughout more than four centuries, from Ponce de Leon in his caravels to the latest Pennsylvanian in his Buick”—You can throw in Walt Disney, HMO-barons, spring-break bros and hoes, and sub-prime mortgage lenders—”Florida has been invaded by seekers of gold or of sunshine. The result of all of this is a material and immaterial pattern of infinite variety, replete with contrasts, paradoxes, confusions, and inconsistencies.”

“Seekers of gold or of sunshine”—that’s a damn fine line to walk: between the Freedom—with a capital F—that we all seek and the temptations and trappings of its pursuit.

It’s all the “seekers of gold or of sunshine” where that lawless feeling comes from.

* * *

Tom McNamara is the co-editor of THE AMERICAN GUIDE. 

OURAY, COLORADO - SLUSHY SEASON or THE LONG, SLOW BREAK-UP OURAY, 37 m. (7,800 alt., 707 pop.), seat of Ouray County, named for the great Ute chief, lies pocketed in a pear-shaped valley, with WHITE HOUSE MOUNTAIN (13,493 alt.) on the west, HAYDEN MOUNTAIN (13,100 alt.) on the south, and CASCADE MOUNTAIN (12,100 alt.) to the northwest. To the east, extending upward to the crest of the range, is a great natural amphitheater, part of the Ouray State Game Refuge. Densely wooded, but with many small parks, it is easily accessible on foot. Years ago the area was stocked with elk. Many are now so tame that they often wander along the streets of the town and through back yards, occasionally getting their antlers entangled in the family wash. — Colorado, A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Spring in the Rockies can be like a good relationship going through a long break up. At first the snow piles high and everything is transformed and clean white. It’s all beautiful, new, exciting and fresh. Eventually the romance begins to fade, new fallen snow is more of a hassle to shovel and plow than a joy to see. Then it melts off, leaving things uglier, slushier, muddier than they were to begin with. Then it snows again, like a desperate one nighter, trying to reclaim a bit of winter’s passion. But it quickly flees again, it wasn’t meant to be and it leaves another dirty, slushy mess behind. And it will happen again, another quickie snowstorm before summer officially arrives — final break-up sex if you will. If you’ve ever lived through a Western winter and spring — or a really long and tedious break up — you know what I mean. *** KC O’Connor is a Guide to Wyoming for The American Guide. He’s a writer and photographer based in Lander, Wyoming. Follow him on Tumblr and Twitter.
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OURAY, COLORADO - SLUSHY SEASON or THE LONG, SLOW BREAK-UP

OURAY, 37 m. (7,800 alt., 707 pop.), seat of Ouray County, named for the great Ute chief, lies pocketed in a pear-shaped valley, with WHITE HOUSE MOUNTAIN (13,493 alt.) on the west, HAYDEN MOUNTAIN (13,100 alt.) on the south, and CASCADE MOUNTAIN (12,100 alt.) to the northwest. To the east, extending upward to the crest of the range, is a great natural amphitheater, part of the Ouray State Game Refuge. Densely wooded, but with many small parks, it is easily accessible on foot. Years ago the area was stocked with elk. Many are now so tame that they often wander along the streets of the town and through back yards, occasionally getting their antlers entangled in the family wash.

— Colorado, A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941)

Spring in the Rockies can be like a good relationship going through a long break up. At first the snow piles high and everything is transformed and clean white. It’s all beautiful, new, exciting and fresh. Eventually the romance begins to fade, new fallen snow is more of a hassle to shovel and plow than a joy to see. Then it melts off, leaving things uglier, slushier, muddier than they were to begin with. Then it snows again, like a desperate one nighter, trying to reclaim a bit of winter’s passion. But it quickly flees again, it wasn’t meant to be and it leaves another dirty, slushy mess behind. And it will happen again, another quickie snowstorm before summer officially arrives — final break-up sex if you will.

If you’ve ever lived through a Western winter and spring — or a really long and tedious break up — you know what I mean.

***

KC O’Connor is a Guide to Wyoming for The American Guide. He’s a writer and photographer based in Lander, Wyoming. Follow him on Tumblr and Twitter.

NEW YORK CITY GUIDE: 1939’s CHINATOWN and LOWER EAST SIDE Though the Bowery Mission is still around today, there aren’t too many remnants left of New York’s Depression-era Lower East Side. It was a place full of pawnshops, beer saloons, flophouses and Jesus-saves welfare institutions. Masses of people lived on top of each other in slums. But in the hard times, a unique city culture — made up of small business owners, politicians, artists, gangsters, composers, prize fighters and labor leaders — was created. The neighborhood was the melting pot of the city. With A/G coming to the Downtown Literary Festival on April 14 at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe — located at 126 Crosby Street — take the WPA time machine to 1939’s Chinatown and Lower East Side and see the neighborhood’s past. Guide Note: Follow the link to download or print the complete New York City Guide: 1939’s Chinatown and Lower East Side. Right-click or cmd-click the map above for a large version to use as your guide. The following passages are excerpted from the NYC Guide. - CHINATOWN - New York’s Chinatown is trying to live down a myth; a myth kept alive by the sight-seeing companies that pile tourists into Chinatown busses, transport them to prepared points of interest, and frequently prime them with tales of mystery and crime. The truth is (and the policemen on the beat will verify it) that no safer district is to be found in New York City. Yet guides have been known to warn tourists to “hold hands while walking through the narrow streets.” Historians differ as to the identity of the first Chinese resident of New York City. Some say it was Quimbo Appo, who came to San Francisco in 1844 and arrived here a few years later; others state it was Ah Ken, a Cantonese merchant who made his home on Mott Street in 1858. Still others contend it was Lou Hoy Sing, a sailor who shook off his wanderlust and settled in New York in 1862. (He married an Irish lass who bore him two stalwart sons, one of whom became a policeman and the other a truck driver.) 1939 TOUR SEE MAP INSERT. “Tongs,” the Chinese equivalent of American fraternal societies, ruled the quarter with iron discipline and fought each other with hired gunmen. The headquarters of the (#79) HIP SING TONG are situated appropriately near the corner of Pell and Doyers Streets, for just beyond is the (#78) BLOODY ANGLE, the bend in Doyers Street where henchmen of this tong fought the powerful (#75) ON LEONG TONG in the early 1900s. The Hip Sings, led by Mock Duck, a gambler, battled the On Leongs, captained by Tom Lee, for control of the lucrative gambling and opium rackets. - LOWER EAST SIDE and THE BOWERY- The dramatic, intensely human story of the Lower East Side is a familiar chapter in the epic of America; a host of writers some seeking out the Lower East Side and others originating there have described its people. Here have dwelt the people whose hands built the city’s elevateds, subways, tubes, bridges, and skyscrapers. Its two square miles of tenements and crowded streets magnify all the problems and conflicts of big-city life. Crowded, noisy, squalid in many of its aspects, no other section of the city is more typical of New York. The Bowery today is chiefly given over to pawnshops, restaurant equipment houses, beer saloons, and miscellaneous small retail shops. Here flophouses offer a bug-infested bed in an unventilated pigeonhole for twenty-five cents a night, restaurants serve ham and eggs for ten cents, and students in barber “colleges” cut hair for fifteen cents. Thousands of the nation’s unemployed drift to this section and may be seen sleeping in all-night restaurants, in doorways, and on loading platforms, furtively begging, or waiting with hopeless faces for some bread line or free lodging house to open. No agency, at present (1939), provides adequate food, shelter, and clothing for these wanderers. Missions furnish food and lodging for a few, and try by sermon and song to touch the souls of the down-and-outers and the sympathies of generous tourists. 1939 TOUR SEE MAP. In the incongruous setting of the theater and restaurant district is (#31) ST. MARK’S IN-THE-BOUWERIE, Second Avenue and Stuyvesant (East Tenth) Street. Erected in 1660, as a Dutch chapel, on the farm of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, it was rebuilt in 1799. The steeple and portico were added in 1826 and in 1858. Pagan-looking frescoes fill the pediment above the porch. They recall the pastorate of Dr. William Norman Guthrie. In an effort to make the church attractive to progressive parishioners, Dr. Guthrie worked out a ritual based on the theory of the essential unity of all religions, which included Greek folk dancing, American Indian chants, and many other things which the conservative element in the diocese heatedly declared to have no place in an Episcopalian church. A Body and Soul Clinic was attached to the church with the aim of combining physical and spiritual treatment. * * * Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara are co-editors of THE AMERICAN GUIDE.
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NEW YORK CITY GUIDE: 1939’s CHINATOWN and LOWER EAST SIDE

Though the Bowery Mission is still around today, there aren’t too many remnants left of New York’s Depression-era Lower East Side. It was a place full of pawnshops, beer saloons, flophouses and Jesus-saves welfare institutions. Masses of people lived on top of each other in slums. But in the hard times, a unique city culture — made up of small business owners, politicians, artists, gangsters, composers, prize fighters and labor leaders — was created. The neighborhood was the melting pot of the city.

With A/G coming to the Downtown Literary Festival on April 14 at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe — located at 126 Crosby Street — take the WPA time machine to 1939’s Chinatown and Lower East Side and see the neighborhood’s past.

Guide Note: Follow the link to download or print the complete New York City Guide: 1939’s Chinatown and Lower East Side. Right-click or cmd-click the map above for a large version to use as your guide. The following passages are excerpted from the NYC Guide.

- CHINATOWN -

New York’s Chinatown is trying to live down a myth; a myth kept alive by the sight-seeing companies that pile tourists into Chinatown busses, transport them to prepared points of interest, and frequently prime them with tales of mystery and crime. The truth is (and the policemen on the beat will verify it) that no safer district is to be found in New York City. Yet guides have been known to warn tourists to “hold hands while walking through the narrow streets.”

Historians differ as to the identity of the first Chinese resident of New York City. Some say it was Quimbo Appo, who came to San Francisco in 1844 and arrived here a few years later; others state it was Ah Ken, a Cantonese merchant who made his home on Mott Street in 1858. Still others contend it was Lou Hoy Sing, a sailor who shook off his wanderlust and settled in New York in 1862. (He married an Irish lass who bore him two stalwart sons, one of whom became a policeman and the other a truck driver.)

1939 TOUR

SEE MAP INSERT. “Tongs,” the Chinese equivalent of American fraternal societies, ruled the quarter with iron discipline and fought each other with hired gunmen.

The headquarters of the (#79) HIP SING TONG are situated appropriately near the corner of Pell and Doyers Streets, for just beyond is the (#78) BLOODY ANGLE, the bend in Doyers Street where henchmen of this tong fought the powerful (#75) ON LEONG TONG in the early 1900s. The Hip Sings, led by Mock Duck, a gambler, battled the On Leongs, captained by Tom Lee, for control of the lucrative gambling and opium rackets.

- LOWER EAST SIDE and THE BOWERY-

The dramatic, intensely human story of the Lower East Side is a familiar chapter in the epic of America; a host of writers some seeking out the Lower East Side and others originating there have described its people. Here have dwelt the people whose hands built the city’s elevateds, subways, tubes, bridges, and skyscrapers. Its two square miles of tenements and crowded streets magnify all the problems and conflicts of big-city life. Crowded, noisy, squalid in many of its aspects, no other section of the city is more typical of New York.

The Bowery today is chiefly given over to pawnshops, restaurant equipment houses, beer saloons, and miscellaneous small retail shops. Here flophouses offer a bug-infested bed in an unventilated pigeonhole for twenty-five cents a night, restaurants serve ham and eggs for ten cents, and students in barber “colleges” cut hair for fifteen cents. Thousands of the nation’s unemployed drift to this section and may be seen sleeping in all-night restaurants, in doorways, and on loading platforms, furtively begging, or waiting with hopeless faces for some bread line or free lodging house to open. No agency, at present (1939), provides adequate food, shelter, and clothing for these wanderers. Missions furnish food and lodging for a few, and try by sermon and song to touch the souls of the down-and-outers and the sympathies of generous tourists.

1939 TOUR

SEE MAP. In the incongruous setting of the theater and restaurant district is (#31) ST. MARK’S IN-THE-BOUWERIE, Second Avenue and Stuyvesant (East Tenth) Street. Erected in 1660, as a Dutch chapel, on the farm of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, it was rebuilt in 1799. The steeple and portico were added in 1826 and in 1858. Pagan-looking frescoes fill the pediment above the porch. They recall the pastorate of Dr. William Norman Guthrie. In an effort to make the church attractive to progressive parishioners, Dr. Guthrie worked out a ritual based on the theory of the essential unity of all religions, which included Greek folk dancing, American Indian chants, and many other things which the conservative element in the diocese heatedly declared to have no place in an Episcopalian church. A Body and Soul Clinic was attached to the church with the aim of combining physical and spiritual treatment.

* * *

Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara are co-editors of THE AMERICAN GUIDE.

ROAD TRIP WITH THE AMERICAN GUIDE  What: Downtown Literary Festival Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe - NYC When: Sunday - April 14 - 2:30PM  Facebook: RSVP For a visitor to New York City in the 1940s, no guide was more comprehensive than the WPA Guide to New York City, a block-by-block encyclopedia of the neighborhoods, covered by some of the city’s most talented writers. The book was a part of the “American Guide Series,” published by the Federal Writers Project between 1935 and 1943, which encouraged Depression-weary Americans to explore their own backyard. For our exploration of the American Guide, we’re joined by Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara, creators of the The American Guide Tumblr, which aims to capture the spirit of travel and discovery fostered by the original guide. Also joining us is Gabriel Kahane, composer of Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, a suite based on the American Guide, which will have its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 27th. Discussion moderated by Michelle Legro of Lapham’s Quarterly. Guide Note: Follow your guide and hear about 1939’s Lower East Side. See The Bowery, “sinister street of lurid fiction and drama,” and its pawnshops, beer saloons, flophouses and missions. (The Bowery “Salvation” and “Rain” illustrations by Eli Jacobi, WPA.) * * * Road Trip With The American Guide is a part of the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival in New York City, from McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. It’s a daylong celebration of the literary culture of the city. The festival will take place at both bookstores simultaneously throughout the day on Sunday, April 14, 2013. 
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ROAD TRIP WITH THE AMERICAN GUIDE  What: Downtown Literary Festival Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe - NYC When: Sunday - April 14 - 2:30PM  Facebook: RSVP For a visitor to New York City in the 1940s, no guide was more comprehensive than the WPA Guide to New York City, a block-by-block encyclopedia of the neighborhoods, covered by some of the city’s most talented writers. The book was a part of the “American Guide Series,” published by the Federal Writers Project between 1935 and 1943, which encouraged Depression-weary Americans to explore their own backyard. For our exploration of the American Guide, we’re joined by Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara, creators of the The American Guide Tumblr, which aims to capture the spirit of travel and discovery fostered by the original guide. Also joining us is Gabriel Kahane, composer of Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, a suite based on the American Guide, which will have its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 27th. Discussion moderated by Michelle Legro of Lapham’s Quarterly. Guide Note: Follow your guide and hear about 1939’s Lower East Side. See The Bowery, “sinister street of lurid fiction and drama,” and its pawnshops, beer saloons, flophouses and missions. (The Bowery “Salvation” and “Rain” illustrations by Eli Jacobi, WPA.) * * * Road Trip With The American Guide is a part of the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival in New York City, from McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. It’s a daylong celebration of the literary culture of the city. The festival will take place at both bookstores simultaneously throughout the day on Sunday, April 14, 2013. 
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ROAD TRIP WITH THE AMERICAN GUIDE  What: Downtown Literary Festival Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe - NYC When: Sunday - April 14 - 2:30PM  Facebook: RSVP For a visitor to New York City in the 1940s, no guide was more comprehensive than the WPA Guide to New York City, a block-by-block encyclopedia of the neighborhoods, covered by some of the city’s most talented writers. The book was a part of the “American Guide Series,” published by the Federal Writers Project between 1935 and 1943, which encouraged Depression-weary Americans to explore their own backyard. For our exploration of the American Guide, we’re joined by Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara, creators of the The American Guide Tumblr, which aims to capture the spirit of travel and discovery fostered by the original guide. Also joining us is Gabriel Kahane, composer of Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, a suite based on the American Guide, which will have its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 27th. Discussion moderated by Michelle Legro of Lapham’s Quarterly. Guide Note: Follow your guide and hear about 1939’s Lower East Side. See The Bowery, “sinister street of lurid fiction and drama,” and its pawnshops, beer saloons, flophouses and missions. (The Bowery “Salvation” and “Rain” illustrations by Eli Jacobi, WPA.) * * * Road Trip With The American Guide is a part of the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival in New York City, from McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. It’s a daylong celebration of the literary culture of the city. The festival will take place at both bookstores simultaneously throughout the day on Sunday, April 14, 2013. 
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ROAD TRIP WITH THE AMERICAN GUIDE  What: Downtown Literary Festival Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe - NYC When: Sunday - April 14 - 2:30PM  Facebook: RSVP For a visitor to New York City in the 1940s, no guide was more comprehensive than the WPA Guide to New York City, a block-by-block encyclopedia of the neighborhoods, covered by some of the city’s most talented writers. The book was a part of the “American Guide Series,” published by the Federal Writers Project between 1935 and 1943, which encouraged Depression-weary Americans to explore their own backyard. For our exploration of the American Guide, we’re joined by Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara, creators of the The American Guide Tumblr, which aims to capture the spirit of travel and discovery fostered by the original guide. Also joining us is Gabriel Kahane, composer of Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, a suite based on the American Guide, which will have its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 27th. Discussion moderated by Michelle Legro of Lapham’s Quarterly. Guide Note: Follow your guide and hear about 1939’s Lower East Side. See The Bowery, “sinister street of lurid fiction and drama,” and its pawnshops, beer saloons, flophouses and missions. (The Bowery “Salvation” and “Rain” illustrations by Eli Jacobi, WPA.) * * * Road Trip With The American Guide is a part of the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival in New York City, from McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. It’s a daylong celebration of the literary culture of the city. The festival will take place at both bookstores simultaneously throughout the day on Sunday, April 14, 2013. 
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ROAD TRIP WITH THE AMERICAN GUIDE 

What: Downtown Literary Festival

Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe - NYC

When: Sunday - April 14 - 2:30PM 

Facebook: RSVP

For a visitor to New York City in the 1940s, no guide was more comprehensive than the WPA Guide to New York City, a block-by-block encyclopedia of the neighborhoods, covered by some of the city’s most talented writers. The book was a part of the “American Guide Series,” published by the Federal Writers Project between 1935 and 1943, which encouraged Depression-weary Americans to explore their own backyard.

For our exploration of the American Guide, we’re joined by Erin Chapman and Tom McNamara, creators of the The American Guide Tumblr, which aims to capture the spirit of travel and discovery fostered by the original guide. Also joining us is Gabriel Kahane, composer of Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States, a suite based on the American Guide, which will have its world premiere at Carnegie Hall on April 27th. Discussion moderated by Michelle Legro of Lapham’s Quarterly.

Guide Note: Follow your guide and hear about 1939’s Lower East Side. See The Bowery, “sinister street of lurid fiction and drama,” and its pawnshops, beer saloons, flophouses and missions. (The Bowery “Salvation” and “Rain” illustrations by Eli Jacobi, WPA.)

* * *

Road Trip With The American Guide is a part of the inaugural Downtown Literary Festival in New York City, from McNally Jackson and Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. It’s a daylong celebration of the literary culture of the city. The festival will take place at both bookstores simultaneously throughout the day on Sunday, April 14, 2013. 

WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute. — Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941) Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet.  Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever. But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special.  [Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…] * * * Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.
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WELCOME TO CORTEZ

CORTEZ, 200.5 m.  (6,198 alt., 921 pop.), seat of Montezuma County, is a trading center for sheep and cattle raisers who pasture their herds on the sage flats to the west.  The town was founded in 1887 when ranchers first pushed into the Montezuma Valley; many of the tan sandstone buildings were erected during that period.  Cortez is interesting on Saturday nights, when its main street is filled with ranchers, farmers, and Indians; the latter are usually dressed in brilliant velveteens and calicoes, and aglitter with silver and turquoise jewelry. (…) The majority are Ute, although there is a sprinkling of Navaho and Piute.

— Colorado: A Guide To the Highest State (WPA, 1941)

Today Cortez is a town of 8,500 people.  It is still the seat of Montezuma County, in the southwest corner of Colorado.  The main industries are tourism, energy, and agriculture, and Saturday nights tend to be quiet. 

Most tourists who visit Cortez are headed for Mesa Verde National Park.  And don’t get me wrong, Mesa Verde is great.  Along with the famous cliff dwellings, the park has an old school museum, the Chapin Mesa Archaeological Museum, full of dioramas and displays made by Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) workers in the 1930s.  There’s also a sweet new visitor center right at the park entrance.  And from the top of the mesa, you can see forever.

But if you go to Cortez, spend a day or two at Mesa Verde, and leave, you will have missed out on what makes this area so special. 

[Read more over at textless.tumblr.com…]

* * *

Amadee Ricketts is an At-Large Guide to the West. She’s worked as a cemetary groundskeeper, a shoeshine valet, and a bill collector. More recently, she’s been a children’s librarian in five states. She takes a lot of pictures and lives near Durango, CO. You can see her photos at textless.tumblr.com.

SUGARLAND A guide to Harlem, Florida, using Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State (WPA, 1939) as your map.  You see the sign — Harlem — and turn off the Sugarland Highway just past Clewiston. Unless you lived in it, you wouldn’t know Harlem, Florida. You drive up and are introduced by a white church outlined in yellow abutting a graveyard. So many of the structures are white: from the blindingly-so church to the faded, off-white houses up and down the streets. In the cemetery, white cattle egrets strut among the headstones, skittering off when you get too close.  Your WPA Florida guidebook says Harlem was a settlement established by the transient blacks that worked in the U.S. Sugar Corporation fields. And, in the square-mile wide Harlem skyline, the U.S. Sugar plant is still there. It is the Harlem skyline. You get the feeling it always will be. Today, the town remains almost all black, half live below the poverty line, and half still work in agriculture. Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1937 book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is quoted by your guide; describing the scene of itinerant pickers in and around Lake Okeechobee, not far from Harlem: Day by day now, the hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping in with their shoes and sore feet from walking. It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you. They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. All night, all day, hurrying in to pick beans. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. In Harlem, take out the black glossy SUVs and beat-up pick-ups, imagine half the number of headstones in the church graveyard: sometimes years gone by can still leave things in stasis, just more of the same and the same. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of The American Guide.
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SUGARLAND A guide to Harlem, Florida, using Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State (WPA, 1939) as your map.  You see the sign — Harlem — and turn off the Sugarland Highway just past Clewiston. Unless you lived in it, you wouldn’t know Harlem, Florida. You drive up and are introduced by a white church outlined in yellow abutting a graveyard. So many of the structures are white: from the blindingly-so church to the faded, off-white houses up and down the streets. In the cemetery, white cattle egrets strut among the headstones, skittering off when you get too close.  Your WPA Florida guidebook says Harlem was a settlement established by the transient blacks that worked in the U.S. Sugar Corporation fields. And, in the square-mile wide Harlem skyline, the U.S. Sugar plant is still there. It is the Harlem skyline. You get the feeling it always will be. Today, the town remains almost all black, half live below the poverty line, and half still work in agriculture. Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1937 book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is quoted by your guide; describing the scene of itinerant pickers in and around Lake Okeechobee, not far from Harlem: Day by day now, the hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping in with their shoes and sore feet from walking. It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you. They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. All night, all day, hurrying in to pick beans. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. In Harlem, take out the black glossy SUVs and beat-up pick-ups, imagine half the number of headstones in the church graveyard: sometimes years gone by can still leave things in stasis, just more of the same and the same. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of The American Guide.
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SUGARLAND A guide to Harlem, Florida, using Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State (WPA, 1939) as your map.  You see the sign — Harlem — and turn off the Sugarland Highway just past Clewiston. Unless you lived in it, you wouldn’t know Harlem, Florida. You drive up and are introduced by a white church outlined in yellow abutting a graveyard. So many of the structures are white: from the blindingly-so church to the faded, off-white houses up and down the streets. In the cemetery, white cattle egrets strut among the headstones, skittering off when you get too close.  Your WPA Florida guidebook says Harlem was a settlement established by the transient blacks that worked in the U.S. Sugar Corporation fields. And, in the square-mile wide Harlem skyline, the U.S. Sugar plant is still there. It is the Harlem skyline. You get the feeling it always will be. Today, the town remains almost all black, half live below the poverty line, and half still work in agriculture. Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1937 book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is quoted by your guide; describing the scene of itinerant pickers in and around Lake Okeechobee, not far from Harlem: Day by day now, the hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping in with their shoes and sore feet from walking. It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you. They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. All night, all day, hurrying in to pick beans. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. In Harlem, take out the black glossy SUVs and beat-up pick-ups, imagine half the number of headstones in the church graveyard: sometimes years gone by can still leave things in stasis, just more of the same and the same. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of The American Guide.
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SUGARLAND A guide to Harlem, Florida, using Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State (WPA, 1939) as your map.  You see the sign — Harlem — and turn off the Sugarland Highway just past Clewiston. Unless you lived in it, you wouldn’t know Harlem, Florida. You drive up and are introduced by a white church outlined in yellow abutting a graveyard. So many of the structures are white: from the blindingly-so church to the faded, off-white houses up and down the streets. In the cemetery, white cattle egrets strut among the headstones, skittering off when you get too close.  Your WPA Florida guidebook says Harlem was a settlement established by the transient blacks that worked in the U.S. Sugar Corporation fields. And, in the square-mile wide Harlem skyline, the U.S. Sugar plant is still there. It is the Harlem skyline. You get the feeling it always will be. Today, the town remains almost all black, half live below the poverty line, and half still work in agriculture. Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1937 book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is quoted by your guide; describing the scene of itinerant pickers in and around Lake Okeechobee, not far from Harlem: Day by day now, the hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping in with their shoes and sore feet from walking. It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you. They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. All night, all day, hurrying in to pick beans. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. In Harlem, take out the black glossy SUVs and beat-up pick-ups, imagine half the number of headstones in the church graveyard: sometimes years gone by can still leave things in stasis, just more of the same and the same. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of The American Guide.
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SUGARLAND A guide to Harlem, Florida, using Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State (WPA, 1939) as your map.  You see the sign — Harlem — and turn off the Sugarland Highway just past Clewiston. Unless you lived in it, you wouldn’t know Harlem, Florida. You drive up and are introduced by a white church outlined in yellow abutting a graveyard. So many of the structures are white: from the blindingly-so church to the faded, off-white houses up and down the streets. In the cemetery, white cattle egrets strut among the headstones, skittering off when you get too close.  Your WPA Florida guidebook says Harlem was a settlement established by the transient blacks that worked in the U.S. Sugar Corporation fields. And, in the square-mile wide Harlem skyline, the U.S. Sugar plant is still there. It is the Harlem skyline. You get the feeling it always will be. Today, the town remains almost all black, half live below the poverty line, and half still work in agriculture. Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1937 book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is quoted by your guide; describing the scene of itinerant pickers in and around Lake Okeechobee, not far from Harlem: Day by day now, the hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping in with their shoes and sore feet from walking. It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you. They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. All night, all day, hurrying in to pick beans. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor. In Harlem, take out the black glossy SUVs and beat-up pick-ups, imagine half the number of headstones in the church graveyard: sometimes years gone by can still leave things in stasis, just more of the same and the same. * * * Tom McNamara is the co-editor of The American Guide.
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SUGARLAND

A guide to Harlem, Florida, using Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State (WPA, 1939) as your map. 

You see the sign — Harlem — and turn off the Sugarland Highway just past Clewiston. Unless you lived in it, you wouldn’t know Harlem, Florida. You drive up and are introduced by a white church outlined in yellow abutting a graveyard. So many of the structures are white: from the blindingly-so church to the faded, off-white houses up and down the streets. In the cemetery, white cattle egrets strut among the headstones, skittering off when you get too close. 

Your WPA Florida guidebook says Harlem was a settlement established by the transient blacks that worked in the U.S. Sugar Corporation fields. And, in the square-mile wide Harlem skyline, the U.S. Sugar plant is still there. It is the Harlem skyline. You get the feeling it always will be.

Today, the town remains almost all black, half live below the poverty line, and half still work in agriculture.

Florida-born Zora Neale Hurston, in her 1937 book, Their Eyes Were Watching God, is quoted by your guide; describing the scene of itinerant pickers in and around Lake Okeechobee, not far from Harlem:

Day by day now, the hordes of workers poured in. Some came limping in with their shoes and sore feet from walking. It’s hard trying to follow your shoe instead of your shoe following you. They came in wagons from way up in Georgia and they came in truck loads from east, west, north and south. Permanent transients with no attachments and tired looking men with their families and dogs in flivvers. All night, all day, hurrying in to pick beans. Skillets, beds, patched up spare inner tubes all hanging and dangling from the ancient cars on the outside and hopeful humanity, herded and hovered on the inside, chugging on to the muck. People ugly from ignorance and broken from being poor.

In Harlem, take out the black glossy SUVs and beat-up pick-ups, imagine half the number of headstones in the church graveyard: sometimes years gone by can still leave things in stasis, just more of the same and the same.

* * *

Tom McNamara is the co-editor of The American Guide.

THE AMERICAN GIFT GUIDE This holiday season, we suggest a gift that appeals to both the history nerd and the travel buff — one of the original WPA American Guide series. There are books on almost every state (sorry, Hawaii!), city guides, highway routes and specialty books on places like the Berkshire Hills and ghost towns of Colorado. Our introduction to the series was the New York City Guide (still in print). Written by talented folks like John Cheever, it’s full of endlessly entertaining anecdotes about the streets we walk in every day: In the 1880s and 1890s, the area between 24th and 40th Streets, from Fifth to Seventh Avenue, was notorious as the wickedest and gayest spot in the city. Reformers of the day referred to it as “Satan’s Circus.” … Sisters’ Row, near here, was run by seven sisters of reputedly great physical charm. On certain nights only gentlemen in evening dress were admitted, and all the proceeds taken in on Christmas Eve were donated to charity. — New York City Guide (WPA, 1939) Many of the Guides have been reprinted or are available from your favorite used book sellers. P.S. If anyone’s shopping for us, we’d love a first edition copy of Whaling Masters — one of the rarest in the series.
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THE AMERICAN GIFT GUIDE

This holiday season, we suggest a gift that appeals to both the history nerd and the travel buff — one of the original WPA American Guide series. There are books on almost every state (sorry, Hawaii!), city guides, highway routes and specialty books on places like the Berkshire Hills and ghost towns of Colorado.

Our introduction to the series was the New York City Guide (still in print). Written by talented folks like John Cheever, it’s full of endlessly entertaining anecdotes about the streets we walk in every day:

In the 1880s and 1890s, the area between 24th and 40th Streets, from Fifth to Seventh Avenue, was notorious as the wickedest and gayest spot in the city. Reformers of the day referred to it as “Satan’s Circus.” … Sisters’ Row, near here, was run by seven sisters of reputedly great physical charm. On certain nights only gentlemen in evening dress were admitted, and all the proceeds taken in on Christmas Eve were donated to charity.

— New York City Guide (WPA, 1939)

Many of the Guides have been reprinted or are available from your favorite used book sellers.

P.S. If anyone’s shopping for us, we’d love a first edition copy of Whaling Masters — one of the rarest in the series.

A guide to Wickenburg, Arizona using Arizona, the Grand Canyon State: A State Guide (WPA, 1940) as your map. Wickenburg sits at the confluence of highways 60, 89, and 93 in central Arizona. If you want to get to and from Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix or a few smaller cities, you will find yourself in the town on the Hassayampa River. This is not an accident. German immigrant Henry Wickenburg discovered “The Vulture” gold mine 149 years ago, just 14 miles from the town that was quickly named for him. Soon swarmed with miners and merchants, Wickenburg was a transportation hub when the stagecoach was considered a comfortable way to get around. But what really put Wickenburg on the map was a phenomenon that gave the town its most well-known nickname in the 1930s: “Dude Ranch Capital of the World.” Non- westerners who wanted a cowboy vacation came to places like Wickenburg to dress in denim, ride horses, sing around the campfire, and pretend they were in a Gary Cooper movie. As the WPA Guide put it so colorfully, “Dude ranches, open here the year round, combine the rudeness of corrals and stables with modern hotel luxury.” The past and present are layered together in today’s Wickenburg. You can still stay at a dude ranch, and you can take in modern art at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum. Saguaro cacti beckon just outside of town. Circle the roundabout in the city center and take in the life-sized bronzes reminiscent of Remington. But don’t worry about that Gila Monster or rattlesnake you see on city sidewalks. They’re bronzes too, just a reminder that the Wild West still lives. * * * Lynn Downey is an At-large Guide to the West for The American Guide. She’s a writer and archivist based in Sonoma, California. See her latest book, Wickenburg: Images of America.
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A guide to Wickenburg, Arizona using Arizona, the Grand Canyon State: A State Guide (WPA, 1940) as your map. Wickenburg sits at the confluence of highways 60, 89, and 93 in central Arizona. If you want to get to and from Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix or a few smaller cities, you will find yourself in the town on the Hassayampa River. This is not an accident. German immigrant Henry Wickenburg discovered “The Vulture” gold mine 149 years ago, just 14 miles from the town that was quickly named for him. Soon swarmed with miners and merchants, Wickenburg was a transportation hub when the stagecoach was considered a comfortable way to get around. But what really put Wickenburg on the map was a phenomenon that gave the town its most well-known nickname in the 1930s: “Dude Ranch Capital of the World.” Non- westerners who wanted a cowboy vacation came to places like Wickenburg to dress in denim, ride horses, sing around the campfire, and pretend they were in a Gary Cooper movie. As the WPA Guide put it so colorfully, “Dude ranches, open here the year round, combine the rudeness of corrals and stables with modern hotel luxury.” The past and present are layered together in today’s Wickenburg. You can still stay at a dude ranch, and you can take in modern art at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum. Saguaro cacti beckon just outside of town. Circle the roundabout in the city center and take in the life-sized bronzes reminiscent of Remington. But don’t worry about that Gila Monster or rattlesnake you see on city sidewalks. They’re bronzes too, just a reminder that the Wild West still lives. * * * Lynn Downey is an At-large Guide to the West for The American Guide. She’s a writer and archivist based in Sonoma, California. See her latest book, Wickenburg: Images of America.
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A guide to Wickenburg, Arizona using Arizona, the Grand Canyon State: A State Guide (WPA, 1940) as your map.

Wickenburg sits at the confluence of highways 60, 89, and 93 in central Arizona. If you want to get to and from Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix or a few smaller cities, you will find yourself in the town on the Hassayampa River.

This is not an accident.

German immigrant Henry Wickenburg discovered “The Vulture” gold mine 149 years ago, just 14 miles from the town that was quickly named for him. Soon swarmed with miners and merchants, Wickenburg was a transportation hub when the stagecoach was considered a comfortable way to get around.

But what really put Wickenburg on the map was a phenomenon that gave the town its most well-known nickname in the 1930s: “Dude Ranch Capital of the World.” Non- westerners who wanted a cowboy vacation came to places like Wickenburg to dress in denim, ride horses, sing around the campfire, and pretend they were in a Gary Cooper movie.

As the WPA Guide put it so colorfully, “Dude ranches, open here the year round, combine the rudeness of corrals and stables with modern hotel luxury.”

The past and present are layered together in today’s Wickenburg. You can still stay at a dude ranch, and you can take in modern art at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum. Saguaro cacti beckon just outside of town. Circle the roundabout in the city center and take in the life-sized bronzes reminiscent of Remington.

But don’t worry about that Gila Monster or rattlesnake you see on city sidewalks. They’re bronzes too, just a reminder that the Wild West still lives.

* * *

Lynn Downey is an At-large Guide to the West for The American Guide. She’s a writer and archivist based in Sonoma, California. See her latest book, Wickenburg: Images of America.

One would suppose that the boundaries of a State only 1084 miles in area could have been settled without difficulty, yet they were not finally established until more than 260 years after the founding of Providence. Rufus Choate once declared that the boundaries of Rhode Island might as well have been marked on the north by a bramblebush, on the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of bees in swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails.  — Rhode Island, A Guide To the Smallest State (WPA, 1937)
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One would suppose that the boundaries of a State only 1084 miles in area could have been settled without difficulty, yet they were not finally established until more than 260 years after the founding of Providence. Rufus Choate once declared that the boundaries of Rhode Island might as well have been marked on the north by a bramblebush, on the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of bees in swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails.  — Rhode Island, A Guide To the Smallest State (WPA, 1937)
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One would suppose that the boundaries of a State only 1084 miles in area could have been settled without difficulty, yet they were not finally established until more than 260 years after the founding of Providence. Rufus Choate once declared that the boundaries of Rhode Island might as well have been marked on the north by a bramblebush, on the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of bees in swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails.  — Rhode Island, A Guide To the Smallest State (WPA, 1937)
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One would suppose that the boundaries of a State only 1084 miles in area could have been settled without difficulty, yet they were not finally established until more than 260 years after the founding of Providence. Rufus Choate once declared that the boundaries of Rhode Island might as well have been marked on the north by a bramblebush, on the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of bees in swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails.  — Rhode Island, A Guide To the Smallest State (WPA, 1937)
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One would suppose that the boundaries of a State only 1084 miles in area could have been settled without difficulty, yet they were not finally established until more than 260 years after the founding of Providence. Rufus Choate once declared that the boundaries of Rhode Island might as well have been marked on the north by a bramblebush, on the south by a bluejay, on the west by a hive of bees in swarming time, and on the east by five hundred foxes with firebrands tied to their tails. 

— Rhode Island, A Guide To the Smallest State (WPA, 1937)