Humans have occupied the North American continent for many thousands of years.
We have left our footprints on the land in countless ways. Every step we have taken,
everything we have built has changed the land profoundly.
In Alaska, our 49th State, bush pilots have been operating
since the 1920s. The image in this section is from a dock in 2022 Alaska.

In the southwestern United States we find evidence of communities
that thrived for many years, and then the people moved on. The Ancestral Puebloans
(often called Anasazi) settled parts of the southwest and built cliff dwellings and villages.
They farmed, practiced their religions and gazed at the stars.
When the land became infertile they moved on. As their name implies,
they are the ancestors of the modern Pueblo peoples.
In central New Mexico the Salinas Pueblo Missions are remnants of
Catholic mission churches built by Spanish priests who came from Mexico
in the 16th Century. The Christian religion clashed with the beliefs of the
Pueblo and Mogollon peoples who lived in the area at the time.

Much later, as the United States created a national network of railways,
the citizens moved from the west and east coasts and settled the west.
A system of narrow-gauge railways operated in the western United States
beginning in the late 1800s, used mainly for mining, logging and construction.

Construction of Split Rock Lighthouse, Lake Superior at Duluth, MN,
was begun in 1907 and completed in 1910. The light station closed in 1969.

In 1972 the Federal Government approved funding for the Very Large Array,
a radio astronomy observatory located in central New Mexico.
The VLA was completed in 1980 and part of its mission is to
search for intelligent life in our universe.

The pedestrian bridge over the Colorado River in Moab, UT was built in 2008.
It is a very good way to look up or down the river and
see what goes on, whether it’s water flow or human activity.