The imposing outcrop of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island is synonymous with inescapable fear and unforgiving intimidation—its notoriety inextricably linked to its 29-year tenure as a maximum-security federal penitentiary. While this era of infamy has captured the public imagination, it represents only a single chapter of the island’s complex historical narrative. While surveying San Francisco Bay in August 1775, Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala chartered a prominent ro

On December 5, 1695, Reverend Joseph Lord—a Puritan minister from Massachusetts—and several dozen members of his congregation boarded the...

The esthetic ruins of Old Sheldon Church—situated serendipitously beneath moss-covered canopies in Beaufort County, South...

The socioeconomic programs of Reconstruction stimulated extensive infrastructural development within the former Confederate states....