StrataHistory underfoot

The library of ground

Every place Strata has dug, assembled from its sources and filed by locality and era. A place is reviewed again whenever the ground beneath it is dug afresh.

528 places · 215 localities · last reviewed 27 October 2026
United States FranklinvilleFranklinville grew up as a mill town above the Deep River in Randolph County, North Carolina, its ground marked first by a Revolutionary War escape at Faith Rock in 1782, then by milling from 1804, and finally by a historic district recognised in 1984. 1 dig
8 records United States LehiLehi, Utah, grew from a farming settlement on the old bed of Lake Bonneville into a city of subdivisions and schools, shadowed by the 1849 killings at Battle Creek Canyon and the walled fear that followed, and marked by a flour mill still grinding since 1906. 15 digs
163 records
A platted road in Highland City Highland Boulevard · 1850–2025 A vanished Mormon tabernacle 100 West · 1849–now A Lehi city parcel Main Street · 1850–now A 1905 flour mill, still grinding Legends Boxing · 1849–2011 The railroad that ran where you're standing, then vanished American Fork-Pleasant Grove · 1849–2016 Three skiers bought a desert nobody wanted Eagle Mountain · 1994–2021 A falcon named Flash and ten years of state titles American Fork-Pleasant Grove · 1848–2016 A field became a lot in one year flat Mason Court · 1852–2019 The band that grew up faster than the school Saratoga Springs · 1852–now A hamlet named for a president, then erased Kern Avenue · 1878–2024 A school with no past to tell Highland · 1972–now The house that has no story to tell Highland · 1972–2024 The falcons have no history yet American Fork-Pleasant Grove · 1849–2024 A bond built the school, the town supplies the names American Fork-Pleasant Grove · 1849–now The falcon on empty ground American Fork-Pleasant Grove · 1849–2021
United States Heber City SouthHeber City South lies along US 189 beside Deer Creek Reservoir, Wasatch County land once ruled by the Timpanogos before 1847 settlement. A canyon road paved in the early 1930s became US 189 in 1939, and Deer Creek Dam, finished in 1941, reshaped the valley around it. 1 dig
10 records United States RooseveltRoosevelt, Utah, grew from the 1905-1906 homesteading rush into the Uinta Basin, beginning life as 'Dry Gulch City' before taking its present name. Out along 5000 West, a grid road named for the rare Uintah Special Meridian survey, open Duchesne County farmland stood undeveloped until a house rose there in 2012. 2 digs
16 records
Open ground in Duchesne County 5000 West · 1906–2012 Open ground in Duchesne County 5000 West · 1905–2012
United States DuchesneDuchesne, Utah, grew up along a route older than its numbering — a wagon road between Heber and Fort Duchesne that became the Victory Highway in 1921 and US 40 in 1926. Nearby land, opened to homesteaders in 1905, has stayed quiet; the highway itself has not. 1 dig
10 records United States Heber CityHeber City, Utah, became the seat of Wasatch County in 1859 and grew from a valley reached only by toll road into a railroad and highway town. Its cemetery holds bishop and legislator Abram Hatch, Ute burials, and graves moved ahead of the Jordanelle Dam reservoir. 2 digs
24 records
A highway crossing in Wasatch County US 189 · 1859–now The man who signed Heber City into being · 1859–1995
United States CharlestonCharleston gathers two unrelated grounds under one name: a South Carolina county seat where a burned statehouse became a courthouse that shaped the White House, and a county jail built on a poor burial ground; and a Utah farming town shrunk by a reservoir. Both record ground remade by fire, water and use. 3 digs
37 records
A ranching corner in Charleston, Utah South Charleston Road · 1859–1941 A 1802 county jail, now an event venue Old Charleston Jail · 1680–2016 A ruin became a rehearsal for the White House Charleston County Historic Courthouse Marker · 1718–1933
United States West Santa ClaraWest Santa Clara gathers an unincorporated stretch of the Santa Cruz foothills above Cupertino, where limestone mining at Permanente Quarry grew into a major cement operation under Henry Kaiser, and Congress Springs Road, cut by Chinese laborers for loggers, once led to a mineral-water resort before fire and county purchase changed its course. 2 digs
19 records
A mountain toll road in Santa Clara County Congress Springs Road · 3999 BC–1942 Open hillside in the Santa Cruz foothills · 1777–1960
United States BurleyBurley, Idaho, grew up from a Snake River crossing into an incorporated city by 1905, its farms and radio waves marking ordinary decades. A stretch of road south of town carries darker weight: the site tied to a 1995 murder that took 26 years to reach conviction. 1 dig
8 records United States Township of JeffersonJefferson Township gathers two very different grounds: East Capitol Avenue in Jefferson City, where a warden's house rose beside the Missouri State Penitentiary in 1887–88, and East 1450 Road in Cedar County, rural farmland near Stockton Lake since the Sac River was dammed in 1969. 2 digs
22 records
Open country near Stockton Lake East 1450 Road · 1847–1969 A warden's house built by prison inmates East Capitol Avenue · 1819–2004
United States DeltaThis record gathers one piece of ground on Delta's edge, a vacant 40-acre parcel along 500 West, into the wider story of Millard County, Utah — land unsettled by the Walker War and Black Hawk War before Delta itself was platted, and surveyed again in 1922. 1 dig
8 records United States EurekaEureka, Nevada grew up around silver mining, and its downtown still carries the marks of that boom: fires that cleared ground, violence remembered in local lore, and the Eureka Opera House, built in 1880 and later restored, standing as the town's enduring landmark. 1 dig
15 records United States BakerBaker, Nevada sits at the foot of the Snake Range, where a Fremont village of pit houses and granaries stood from about 1220 to 1295 CE. The peak above carried a Shoshone name before a soldier renamed it for Jefferson Davis in 1859, and the ground now lies within Great Basin National Park. 1 dig
9 records United States AustinAustin, Nevada, rose from a silver strike in Pony Canyon in 1862 and swelled quickly into a boomtown. On Sixth Street, its Masonic and Odd Fellows Hall has stood since 1867, surviving an 1881 fire to remain in use by its founding lodges. 1 dig
15 records United States Ralston ValleyRalston Valley, within the Nevada National Security Site, was never settled in the ordinary sense. Between 1979 and 1983 it was surveyed as a candidate basing area for the MX missile system, its alluvium and volcanic rock measured for a weapon that ultimately went elsewhere. 1 dig
9 records United States TonopahTonopah, Nevada, entered the record in 1900 as a mining boomtown, its early years marked by disease, violence and sudden fortune. Stone buildings, a hotel, and finally a federal post office followed, carrying the town from its rough beginnings into a quieter, settled permanence. 1 dig
15 records United States ElyEly, Nevada grew up around copper and the railroad, its downtown grid laid out in 1907 after floods drove the town uphill. Aultman Street anchored that new townsite, first called Ely City before being renamed East Ely in 1908, amid a boom that built courthouses, tabernacles and theaters nearby. 1 dig
15 records United States Charter Township of PortageCharter Township of Portage's record here centres on Shelden Avenue in Houghton, Michigan, where Andrew Carnegie's $15,000 raised a brick library in 1909 to 1910 on the site of a former armory. It served Houghton's readers for ninety-six years before reopening, in 2006, as a volunteer-run museum of local history. 1 dig
15 records United States OurayOuray, Colorado, took shape on ground that was San Juan County before Ouray County existed, from 1875 to 1877. On 6th Avenue, a power company incorporated in 1885 built a plant on the Uncompahgre River that, through near-closure, a $10 rescue and a torn pipe, still generates electricity today. 1 dig
13 records United States Mount PleasantMount Pleasant, Utah grew from a stone fort raised in 1849 and burned in the Walker War into a settlement refounded through the Black Hawk War, which closed in 1872 with a treaty signed in a bishop's front room on ground that later became its Main Street commercial district. 3 digs
41 records
A downtown historic district on Main Street Main Street · 1852–1979 Irving founded a cemetery and then had it renamed for him Greenwood Road · 1640–2009 The bishop who signed his own war's peace treaty William Stuart Seeley House · 1852–1998
United States HartfordHartford's Barbour Street carries the memory of 1944, when the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey circus tent caught fire during a matinee and collapsed within minutes, killing at least 167 people. The ground has since held grief, inquiry, unrest and, now, plans to rebuild. 1 dig
12 records United States BostonBoston's ground holds more than one century at once — colonial byways and burying grounds, a corner where soldiers fired on a crowd in 1770, a park carved from a harbourside slum, and a nightclub lot where 492 died in 1942. Each place kept its own record; together they trace a city remade by fire, grief and reform. 6 digs
80 records
A Gothic asylum, now apartments Building 1 · 1648–2014 A colonial burying ground, Salem Charter Street · 1630–2013 Site of America's deadliest nightclub fire Piedmont Street · 1634–now A 19th-century park on Boston Harbor Commercial Street · 1625–1990 The family that claimed this ground for its dead Raymond · 1727–2025 A crowd, a musket, five dead in the snow Congress Street · 1700–1985
United States PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia holds ground where a declaration of independence became an act of treason against the Crown, where a Gothic Revival prison once watched seven cellblocks from a single point, where an 18th-century fort survived a deadly siege, and where a surgeon's donated specimens still sit behind glass. 4 digs
57 records
A 19th-century medical museum, still open College of Physicians of Philadelphia · 1811–2013 An 18th-century fort, now a museum Fort Mifflin Road · 1712–now A Gothic Revival prison, now a museum Fairmount Avenue · 1776–2022 Signatures written as treason against the Crown Independence Hall · 1743–now
United States SavannahSavannah's ground holds a plantation turned riverside cemetery, a Greek Revival mansion on Madison Square, and an Italianate house on Monterey Square where a killing became a trial and then a legend. Across three sites, colonial land passed from planters and merchants to public and private hands, each marked by death, ownership, and eventual public access. 3 digs
45 records
An Italianate mansion where its owner shot a man in 1981 Mercer Williams House · 1733–now A Greek Revival mansion on Madison Square West Harris Street · 1733–1994 A riverside cemetery outside Savannah Greenwich Road · 1719–2004
United States Los AngelesAt Windsor Way in Long Beach, within the Los Angeles area, stands the RMS Queen Mary, the Cunard ocean liner launched on the Clyde in 1934. Moored permanently at the Port of Long Beach since 1967, it opened as a hotel and museum in 1971, after once carrying over 16,600 people in a single wartime voyage. 1 dig
8 records United States San DiegoOn Orange Avenue in Coronado, the Hotel del Coronado has stood as a wooden Victorian resort since 1888, raised by Chinese laborers and lit by a world-first electric system. Beneath its beachfront setting lie far older shell mounds, and around it the land boom that founded Coronado itself. 1 dig
12 records United States North MonoNorth Mono's recorded ground centres on Bodie, the gold-rush town founded after prospector W. S. Bodey's 1859 strike at Bodie Bluff. Main Street once held sixty-five saloons during the 1879 boom, before fire and decline left the ruins that California has preserved in 'arrested decay' since 1962. 1 dig
11 records United States DeadwoodDeadwood, South Dakota, rose on the gold-rush frontier and buried much of its early story on the mountainside above it. Mount Moriah Cemetery, opened in 1878 after the flooded Ingleside burial ground was abandoned, gathered gunfighters, miners, madams and marshals into just under five acres of ground, now holding close to 3,400 burials. 1 dig
15 records United States New York CityNew York City's ground holds Times Square's lit crossroads, a Baptist church of radical causes, parks built over potter's fields and a vanished slum, and a garment-factory floor where 146 workers died. Farmland, burial ground, and world's fair site in turn, the city's shape has changed again and again over its holders. 6 digs
82 records
A park built over a demolished slum Worth Street · 1624–2019 A garment-factory building, now NYU classrooms Greene Street · 1776–2024 A 9.6-acre park, once a graveyard and a world's fair site Bryant Park · 1776–2015 A Manhattan park built over a burial ground George Washington · 1672–2023 An 1893 Italian Renaissance church, still an active congregation Judson Memorial Church · 1679–2002 A Theater District crossroads 1501 Broadway · 1780–2024
United States TulsaAt the corner of Greenwood Avenue and East Cameron Street stood the heart of Black Wall Street, a Black-owned business district begun by O. W. Gurley in 1906 and destroyed by a white mob over May 31 and June 1, 1921, then rebuilt by the people who remained. 1 dig
14 records United States WelltonWellton's recorded history centres on Prison Hill Road, site of the Yuma Territorial Prison, a sandstone compound above the Colorado River opposite Fort Yuma. Opened in 1876 and closed in 1909, it held thousands before becoming a schoolhouse, a Depression-era shelter, and finally a state park in 1961. 1 dig
15 records United States Deer LodgeDeer Lodge's modern record centres on Conley Lake Road, where a mid-20th-century lake lodge gave way to the current Montana State Prison, built 1974-1979 to replace the city's old downtown penitentiary. Inmates arrived in September 1979, and the site has since seen executions, a deadly riot, and a 2025 pipe failure. 1 dig
11 records United States BoiseBoise's recorded history here centres on one ground: the Old Idaho State Penitentiary, east of the city, built from 1870 by inmate labour and operated for 101 years as the territorial and state prison until a 1973 riot closed it. It is now a museum. 1 dig
15 records United States Harpers FerryHarpers Ferry grew around a river crossing founded by Robert Harper, buried there in 1782, and became known for the small brick firehouse where John Brown made his last stand in 1859. The town changed hands in the Civil War and was protected as a national historical park from 1944. 1 dig
15 records United States OglethorpeOglethorpe holds the ground of Camp Sumter, the Confederate prison camp known as Andersonville, opened in February 1864 and closed in April 1865. Union veterans bought the site in 1890, the federal government took it over in 1910, and it now stands as a national cemetery and memorial. 1 dig
13 records United States SharpsburgSharpsburg, Maryland, founded in 1763, became the site of the single bloodiest day of the American Civil War on September 17, 1862, when 23,000 men fell near the town. Five years later, the Lodge House rose as gatehouse to the national cemetery that gathered the dead. 1 dig
13 records United States Township of CumberlandCumberland Township, Pennsylvania, holds two pieces of the Gettysburg battlefield: the national cemetery built on Cemetery Hill for Union dead of July 1863, and Devil's Den, the boulder field where Confederate and Union soldiers fought at close range on July 2, 1863. 2 digs
28 records
A boulder battlefield at Gettysburg Sickles Avenue · 1863–2022 A Civil War burial ground founded in 1863 Amos Humiston · 1748–1972
United States Sierra VistaThis record gathers two points of ground in Tombstone, Arizona, near present-day Sierra Vista: the O. K. Corral, a livery founded in 1879 whose name attached to the 1881 gunfight fought nearby, and Boothill Graveyard, a cemetery opened in 1878 that holds the men who fell that day. 2 digs
28 records
Tombstone's old pioneer cemetery, now a roadside memorial State Route 80 · 1878–1991 Tombstone's livery turned gunfight shrine East Fremont Street · 1877–1964
United States Charter Township of BathBath, Michigan, grew from the hamlet of Ossawa into a railroad village platted in 1864, its community hall and cemetery ground later reshaped by the Bath School disaster of May 18, 1927, when Andrew Kehoe's bombing of Bath Consolidated School left 44 dead and the site now a memorial park. 1 dig
14 records United States ChicagoChicago's ground carries two hard records close together: North Desplaines Street, where a bomb killed seven police officers in 1886 and set off a trial that hanged four anarchists, and West Randolph Street, where a 1903 theatre fire killed over 600 before a 1926 movie palace rose on the same site. 2 digs
25 records
A 1926 movie palace, now a Broadway house West Randolph Street · 1803–2019 A bronze sculpture marking a bombing and trial North Desplaines Street · 730–2017
United States AguilarAguilar, Colorado, sits near a coalfield whose ground along County Road 44 carries one of American labour's harshest episodes. A tent colony raised by evicted strikers in 1913 became, on April 20, 1914, the site of the Ludlow Massacre, after which federal investigation, memorial, and recognition slowly reshaped the ground's meaning. 1 dig
13 records United States Wounded KneeWounded Knee is the ground in South Dakota where, on December 29, 1890, the U. S. 7th Cavalry killed between 250 and 300 Lakota men, women, and children under Spotted Elk. Mapped as a village from 1877, it became a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and, in 1973, the site of a 71-day occupation. 1 dig
15 records United States Sheridan LakeSheridan Lake, Colorado, stands near Sand Creek, where on November 29, 1864, Colonel John Chivington's Colorado volunteers attacked a sleeping Cheyenne and Arapaho camp. More than 150 people were killed despite flags of peace flying over the tipis, and the ground is now a national historic site. 1 dig
14 records United States DonnerDonner, near Truckee, California, holds ground long used by the Washoe before it became the winter camp where the Donner Party was trapped by snow in October 1846. The site later became a tourist attraction, a memorial park, and a place still marked by the region's railroad and Chinatown history. 1 dig
14 records United States Township of ConynghamWithin Conyngham Township lies Centralia, Pennsylvania, a borough founded above a coal seam bought by a Philadelphia sea captain around 1830 and incorporated in the 1860s. A mine fire ignited on May 27, 1962, outlasted the town's population, leaving only a handful of residents and a condemned borough by the twenty-first century. 1 dig
15 records United States Township of AdamsThe Township of Adams holds the remains of the South Fork Dam, built in 1836 for the Pennsylvania Canal and later weakened by a private fishing club, whose failure on May 31, 1889 sent twenty million tons of water into Johnstown, fourteen miles below. 1 dig
14 records United States MemphisOn Mulberry Street in Memphis stands the ground of the old Lorraine Motel, opened in 1925 as the whites-only Windsor Hotel, renamed in 1945 by its new owner Walter Bailey, and marked forever by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 before its rebirth as the National Civil Rights Museum. 1 dig
13 records United States WashingtonThis record gathers one point of ground in Washington: Ford's Theatre on 10th Street Northwest. Built in 1833 as a Baptist meeting house, it became a theater, the site of Abraham Lincoln's assassination in 1865, then government offices, and now a working theater and museum. 1 dig
12 records United States DallasDallas gathers two very different grounds: the downtown park where a bluff-top trading post became the city, and later the site of a president's assassination, and a stretch of North Houston Street where an old power plant gave way to a $420 million arena built to keep the Mavericks and Stars at home. 2 digs
29 records
A 1940s park where a president was shot Main Street · 1839–2025 The building that outraced two team owners' patience North Houston Street · 1841–2022
United States Estes ParkEstes Park, Colorado, grew up around land once part of the Earl of Dunraven's failed hunting preserve, later bought by Freelan Oscar Stanley, whose grand hotel above the town came to define it, through foreclosure, fame and a $400 million sale. 1 dig
13 records United States West Feliciana ParishWest Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, holds Myrtles Plantation, a Greek Revival house raised outside St. Francisville in 1796 by fugitive Whiskey Rebellion leader David Bradford. Renamed in 1834, marked by a lawyer's shooting in 1871, it now operates as a bed and breakfast with a long-recorded reputation for hauntings. 1 dig
15 records United States San FranciscoThis record gathers one piece of ground in San Francisco: Alcatraz Island, a rocky point in the bay named by Spanish explorers for its pelicans, built up as a United States Army fort, turned federal penitentiary, occupied by Native American activists, and now kept as a national park. 1 dig
16 records United States New OrleansNew Orleans gathers its past in close quarters: a French Quarter townhouse built for an architect's own family, and a walled cemetery on Basin Street holding tombs of a voodoo queen, a chess champion and a mayor. Fire, flood and epidemic shaped both grounds in turn. 2 digs
29 records
New Orleans's oldest surviving cemetery Basin Street · 1724–2013 A restored 1860s townhouse, now a museum Chartres Street · 1734–2016
United States MansfieldMansfield, Ohio, holds ground shaped by a single long institution on Olivesburg Road: a Civil War training camp turned, from 1886, into a Victorian Gothic prison that housed some 155,000 inmates before closing in 1990 and reopening in 1995 as a museum. 1 dig
16 records United States Courthouse-Collins Settlement DistrictCourthouse-Collins Settlement District's recorded ground centres on Asylum Drive in Weston, West Virginia, where the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum rose in blue sandstone between 1858 and 1881, served as a mental hospital for 130 years, and now stands open as a museum. 1 dig
13 records United States MoundsvilleMoundsville, West Virginia, grew around an ancient Adena mound and a Gothic Revival stone penitentiary built between 1866 and 1876. The prison held convicted men for 129 years until 1995, while the town around it developed a commercial district along Jefferson Avenue from 1835. 1 dig
14 records United States LouisvilleLouisville's record runs from Virginia land claims before Kentucky's founding to a hilltop farm turned tuberculosis hospital, and to a pavement outside a cathedral where David McAtee bled for hours in 2020. Across these grounds, the city's changes show in bricks, graves, and names erased from the census map. 2 digs
29 records
A former tuberculosis hospital, now a tour site Paralee Drive · 1883–now The night the singing started at dawn Cathedral of the Assumption · 1780–2020
United States San JoseSan Jose has grown across Mexican land grants, mission ground, orchard country, and rail-era hamlets, held in turn by soldiers, missionaries, ranchers, and transit officials. Its public record runs from an 1839 grant near Los Altos Hills to a transit system rewriting its own fare estimates four times in St. James Park. 8 digs
74 records
A sprawling Victorian mansion, now a tourist attraction Winchester Boulevard · 1866–2003 Open ground near Moffett Field Sunnyvale · 1844–1994 A quiet residential lot in San Jose Saratoga · 1853–1981 An industrial stretch of Santa Clara Santa Clara · 1790–2022 Cupertino's old West Side Cupertino · 1841–2017 The saint whose name outran him to a mailbox on Stevens Creek Cupertino · 1700–2015
United States St. LouisSt. Louis holds the Lemp Mansion, a 33-room Victorian house built in 1868 for a baker, later bought and expanded by brewer William J. Lemp Sr. Three generations of the Lemp family died by suicide within its walls before it became a restaurant and inn. 1 dig
14 records United States Fall RiverFall River holds one recorded piece of ground so far: 230 Second Street, where Andrew and Abby Borden were killed with a hatchet in 1892. Lizzie Borden was tried and acquitted, and the house later became a bed and breakfast and murder museum. 1 dig
14 records United States Salt Lake CitySalt Lake City holds ground stretched from an 1824 ambush on the Jordan River to a 2026 stabbing at a shopping mall, passing through farming villages, a house that ended a war without battle, and founding families — Mormon settlers, mining senators, railroad men — whose houses, schools and cemeteries still mark its streets. 18 digs
177 records
A railroad corridor turned city block 700 West · 1847–2021 A farmland plat became a small commercial lot in 1987 South Gale Street · 1847–2007 A 1969 statewide college board 400 West · 1865–2024 A college built on ground with no past South Jordan · 1859–2023 A village that outlived its own name West Valley City · 1849–2022 The village that became a shopping center West Valley City · 1000 BC–2022 The dirt here used to grow bitterbrush, not spires Draper · 1849–2009 Seven students grew into a school that never stopped moving Sandy · 100 BC–2015 A hillside empties out, then fills back up East Aspen Leaf Place · 1866–2009 A bungalow built in 1929 was picked up whole and carried across town Joseph E. and Mina W. Mickelsen House · 1818–2018 A pioneer teacher's name on a schoolhouse a filmmaker saved Draper · 1849–2025 The brothers who came home to South Jordan 1385 West · 1859–2023 The senator's house that caught fire on Christmas night David Keith Mansion and Carriage House · 1875–1985 The trap on the Jordan River 2810 West · 1877–1994 The towers that never got their steel above the ground Salt Lake Hardware Building · 1823–2024 The mansion where Utah made peace with the army sent to crush it Devereaux House · 1857–2024
United States Zephyr CoveZephyr Cove sits on Lake Tahoe's eastern Nevada shore, its ground tracing Washoe fishing grounds, 1860s settler cabins, and a named town after its 1930 post office opened. On March 1, 1964, Paradise Airlines Flight 901A crashed nearby, killing all 85 aboard, one of Nevada's deadliest air disasters. 1 dig
7 records United States Silver SpringsSilver Springs, Nevada, sits where US 50 meets US 95A in Lyon County, a crossroads shaped not by nature but by a 1949 real estate venture. Los Angeles salesmen Merle Stanley Peek and Ben Klassen bought 1,800 acres, sold lots by newspaper advertisement, and saw the town officially recognised in 1954. 1 dig
8 records United States EphraimEphraim grew from an 1854 pioneer fort in Utah's Sanpete Valley into a settled farm town, shaped by years of conflict with Native peoples, Mormon cooperative building, and civic institutions such as its Carnegie library and Snow College, founded in 1888. 1 dig
15 records United States Mount Pleasant-MoroniMount Pleasant-Moroni gathers open farm and town ground in Sanpete County, Utah, settled from the 1850s by Latter-day Saint pioneers, scarred by the Wakara and Black Hawk Wars, and later marked by forts, a narrow-gauge railroad, a post office closed in 1896, and farmland that endures unchanged beside it. 2 digs
25 records
Open farmland near a small Sanpete hamlet Chester · 1852–now Open ground near Moroni, Utah · 1852–now
United States Fountain GreenFountain Green, Utah, grew from ground once called Uintah Springs, where four wagon drivers were killed in October 1853. Settlers founded the town in 1859, built it into a sheep-ranching community in Sanpete Valley, and still mark that industry each July with Lamb Day. 1 dig
12 records United States OremOrem, a city in Utah Valley founded in 1877, holds ground once part of Lakeview and bordering older Provo. Its record includes a bishop who once served time for bigamy, a 1934 farmhouse platted into its own lot only in the 1980s, and transit and commerce built and lost across the decades. 2 digs
25 records
A 1934 house on a 1980s lot Davis-Ercanbrack Farmstead · 1849–now The bigamist who came back a bishop South 740 East · 1849–2024
United States Saint JohnsburySaint Johnsbury, Vermont, incorporated as a town in 1791, grew around the Fairbanks scale-works family whose name still marks the place. Its record here turns on one surviving building: a schoolhouse moved, converted to an armory, then split into the Shearer and Corser Double House on Summer Street. 2 digs
27 records
A schoolhouse turned Colonial Revival duplex Shearer and Corser Double House · 1790–2024 A schoolhouse turned double house Shearer and Corser Double House · 1790–2024
United States ProvoProvo, Utah, grew from a Timpanogos fishing ground into a Mormon settlement, then a school town and mining-money city. Its record runs from the 1850 siege at Fort Utah through a condemned man's slow death, a burned tabernacle rebuilt as a temple, and a derelict academy reborn as a library. 18 digs
228 records
BYU land near the Missionary Training Center · 1025–2023 A Federal-style brick house in downtown Provo Peter Wentz House · 1849–now A 25-acre historic district, built on mining money Provo Downtown Historic District · 1849–2022 A burned tabernacle rebuilt as a temple Provo City Center Temple · 1849–2016 The shell they refused to knock down Provo Downtown Historic District · 1849–2016 The house that raised a mayor Charles E. Davies House · 1849–2025 Fire gutted the tabernacle and the church built a temple inside its bones William D. Alexander House · 1849–2016 A fire that ended in a temple Utah County Administration Building · 1849–2016 A siege that ended in beheadings on the Provo River · 1849–now The siege that made room for this street · 1849–1986 The two-day fight that ended in beheadings · 1849–now The man who refused to be tied down 100 East · 1866–2025 The siege that cleared this valley · 1849–now A Provo lawyer argued 59 cases before he lost his life · 1849–2002 How Provo built a school system out of nothing · 1849–2018 The condemned man who chose the bullet over the rope 2230 North · 1849–now The lawyer Congress gave a post office to · 1849–now A school for a thousand students stood empty for twenty years Provo City Library · 1850–2001
United States SpringvilleSpringville, Utah, settled in 1850, grew around an art collection that began with donations to a high school in 1903 and became the state's oldest fine arts museum. The Spanish Colonial Revival building that now houses it was completed in 1937 with WPA, city, church and school-district funds. 1 dig
13 records United States Spanish ForkSpanish Fork, Utah, holds ground stretching from a radiocarbon-dated encampment near 1000 AD to a walled Mormon fort raised against fear in 1852. Farmland, a sugar factory, a railway branch and a modern greenhouse fire all mark the same stretch at Palmyra on its edge. 1 dig
13 records United States HurricaneHurricane, Utah, was founded in 1896 after settlers finished a canal carrying water through solid lava rock to the Virgin River valley. From that farming settlement grew a city, its cemetery, schools and bridge, and later the subdivisions and commercial lots recorded here. 4 digs
43 records
Open farmland near Hurricane, Utah LaVerkin · 1858–now Open ground above the Virgin River LaVerkin · 1893–now Commercial lot, Hurricane · 1896–1994 A newer house on the edge of Hurricane · 1896–now
United States Township of Sainte GenevieveSainte Genevieve began in 1732 as a French colonial settlement on the Mississippi, becoming a Spanish colonial city in 1762 and a county seat in 1735. Its historic core, centred near the Valle Street corner, preserves French colonial houses, a cemetery of early notables, and now a national historical park created in 2020. 1 dig
15 records United States Saint GeorgeSaint George, Utah, founded in 1861 as the Mormon cotton mission's base, holds ground that runs from an 1860 burial field to a 1990 shopping mall. Its roads, graves and storefronts have each been rebuilt in turn, while what they carry has stayed harder to erase. 2 digs
27 records
A mall that buried its own anchors · 1828–2004 The historian who broke a church's silence Utah Tech University · 1860–now
United States Cedar CityCedar City, Utah, was founded by Mormon settlers in 1851 on ground later shadowed by the Mountain Meadows Massacre and the Black Hawk War. Centuries on, it became home to Cedar High School, where student Gordon Church studied before he was murdered for being gay. 1 dig
11 records United States BeaverBeaver, Utah grew on an alluvial fan by the Beaver River, established as a city in 1856 and marked in turn by conflict, a federal fort, a federal highway, and the ordinary rebuilding that followed each of these. 1 dig
10 records United States FillmoreFillmore, Utah, grew up on Pahvant hunting ground beside Corn Creek, serving briefly as territorial capital in the 1850s and as a stop on U. S. Highway 91 for nearly fifty years, while the nearby Mormon settlement of Hatton rose in 1851 and vanished to little but its cemetery. 2 digs
19 records
The town that moved to a creek and vanished · 1851–now The road that got erased · 1851–now
United States GalvestonGalveston gathers its record here house by house, from the steel-framed Moody Home to the turreted Beissner House on 27th Street. Both stood on ground struck directly by the 1900 hurricane, the deadliest natural disaster in American history, and both survived it. 2 digs
29 records
A lumberman's turret arrived a century late 27th Street · 1785–1900 The storm that killed thousands overnight The Moody Home · 1816–now
United States GoshenGoshen, Utah began in 1857 as a Mormon farming settlement on the dry southern edge of Utah Lake's basin, surviving Ute raids and a lower-ground abandonment before settling uphill. Nearby, Genola's forty acres were only surveyed out of farmland in 1981, a far later and quieter beginning. 2 digs
20 records
The farm town that sent a boy to the big leagues · 1852–now A survey line turned into a parcel Genola · 1851–2012
United States Las VegasThis record gathers ground connected to Las Vegas through Long Iron Lane, near Mesquite, Nevada, where the Virgin River once flooded the original 1890s townsite, forcing its people to higher ground and later routing the Las Vegas Freeway through the same flood-prone stretch. 1 dig
1 record United States MapletonMapleton, Utah, began as farmland settled around 1850 under the name Union Bench, an extension of Springville, before disputes over water rights led to its incorporation as a town in 1901. Its Roswell Darius Bird Sr. House, raised in 1892, later became the town's own museum of pioneer memory. 1 dig
13 records United States OgdenOgden, Utah, grew from an 1844-organized city into a railroad and commercial hub, holding brick apartment blocks, a historic tabernacle site and the United States Post Office and Courthouse. On April 22, 1974, a robbery at a nearby Hi-Fi Shop turned into one of the state's worst mass murders. 3 digs
38 records
The night a stereo shop errand became a massacre · 1811–1974 The night the drain cleaner didn't kill fast enough Helms Apartments · 1841–1974 A stereo shop robbery became a night of torture and murder United States Post Office and Courthouse · 1850–1988
United States Park CityPark City, Utah, incorporated in 1869, grew up around silver mines that demanded constant pumping to stay dry. Railroads built in the 1880s hauled coal to keep those mines running until Union Pacific abandoned the line in 1989; three years later it reopened as a 28-mile recreational trail. 2 digs
28 records
The mines needed dry shafts, so a railroad grew here Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park · 1869–2024 The line that outlived the mines it was built to save Historic Union Pacific Rail Trail State Park · 1853–2015
United States LoganLogan, Utah, organized as a city in 1859, grew from a Mormon settlement into a valley seat marked by a college founded by Brigham Young, a mob lynching, and the quiet record of immigrant lives built into its houses and churches. 1 dig
13 records United States HighlandHighland, Utah, was incorporated as a city in 1870 on bench ground above old Lake Bonneville, later farmed before subdivisions such as Dry Creek Highlands and Blessing Rock at Beacon Hill covered it with houses built from the 1990s onward, held since by successive families through sales, mortgages and liens. 7 digs
58 records
A DuPont chemist who bet his own basement over his boss · 1849–now A knight for a mascot, a title for real Lone Peak High School · 1849–2025 An address, and nothing else on record West Horizon Drive · 2004–2025 Some ground has only ever been ground West Southern Cross Court · 2004–2021 A lakebed lot in Highland became a subdivision house · 2005–2019 A lake bottom platted, sold, and refinanced West Broadleaf Hollow Circle · 2014–2020
United States PlanoPlano began as prairie that twice drove settlers off before 1844, then held when Henry Cook arrived in 1845 and buried his son Daniel in 1847. That burial ground, later named for Rachel Cook Baccus, still receives burials today, outlasting the church, highways and malls built around it. 2 digs
15 records
Settlers had to fight twice before this ground held Tennyson Parkway · 1842–2017 The graveyard that survived a church, a highway and a mall · 1845–2017
United States SteinauerSteinauer grew from German-immigrant farm families who opened Rinne Cemetery in 1868 and Salems Cemetery in 1869, then raised Salem United Church of Christ in 1879. The settlement later endured a shooting on its road and the 1918 influenza pandemic. 1 dig
4 records United States CelinaCelina grew up on Collin County prairie once broken by early farm families, whose burial grounds still mark the land. Bush Cemetery, laid out in 1862, and the George McGarrah Cemetery, set aside by a farming family in 1879, remain fixed points as the farms around them became ranches, subdivisions and roads. 2 digs
17 records
A cemetery outlasted the family farm around it Singletree Court · 1848–2019 Where the first settlers of this prairie still lie McKinney · 1862–now
United States American ForkAmerican Fork, Utah, incorporated as a city in 1850, holds a record that runs from an early pioneer burial ground through a farmstead preserved from 1883 to the rock-walled cemetery, built in 1937, where physicist Harvey Fletcher and congresswoman Reva Beck Bosone were laid to rest. 1 dig
12 records United States MiamiThis record gathers the Collins Avenue beachfront in Miami Beach, built up from bay and barrier island from the 1870s onward, where a 1957 MiMo tower hosted the Beatles in 1964 and was, decades later after a fire, deliberately reduced to rubble in 2022. 3 digs
23 records
Beatles played here, then the hotel was left to rot Akoya · 1870–2022 The hotel that hosted the Beatles and died on purpose Monticello Hotel · 1870–2004
United States ChelseaChelsea, Alabama sits near Highland Lakes, a subdivision atop Double Oak Mountain defined not by a founding event but by a 2020 census count of 5,239 people, its ground older than its name, resting on Pennsylvanian-age rock and bordered by cemeteries reaching back to 1843. 1 dig
9 records United States PinedalePinedale, Wyoming, sits near Fremont Lake in Sublette County, ground marked by ancient hunting sites and a modern memorial alike. A 1993 federal phytoplankton survey of the lake, dedicated to biologist Robert C. Averett, shares its waters with the buried evidence of a 1980 family murder. 1 dig
7 records United States BellevueBellevue sits on a mile-wide Idaho plateau whose silver, lead, and gold mines produced more than $60 million between 1881 and 1893. Platted in 1880 and later reorganised under Blaine County, the town survived the silver crash, a 1905 fire, and a 1957 mine explosion. 1 dig
9 records United States Pleasant GrovePleasant Grove, Utah, took shape within a year of the 1849 Battle Creek killings, when militiamen ran down a band of Timpanogos in an icy creek nearby. Stone houses, a tithing office and a working blacksmith shop followed as the settlement grew into a town. 1 dig
15 records United States Elk RidgeElk Ridge, Utah, has been its own city since 1971, but one record here traces a single lot from farmland platted in January 2021 to a house built in 2025, marked in between by a garage explosion that killed a 19-year-old in 2023. 1 dig
11 records United States DraperEast Longbranch Drive in Draper, Utah, traces a single suburban lot from farmland to subdivision to family home, set a mile and a half south of the Draper Utah Temple, dedicated in 2009, which gave this end of the valley its only landmark name. 2 digs
14 records
A house on a quiet Draper street East Longbranch Drive · 2000–2021
United States KnoxvilleKnoxville, founded in 1792, grew from a frontier settlement besieged in 1793 into a county seat marked by courthouse, church and post office. It saw a Civil War siege in 1863, a shooting rooted in old grudges in 1868, and a World's Fair in 1982. 1 dig
14 records United States SedaliaSedalia's recorded ground centres on Castle Pines Village, a gated community platted from 1981 around Castle Pines Golf Club, once neighboured by The International, a PGA Tour event built for its thin mountain air that ran from 1986 until the Tour cancelled it outright in 2007. 1 dig
9 records United States Castle RockCastle Rock, United States, grew from a scatter of ground whose record begins not in any town chronicle but in a soil surveyor's notebook and a vanished hamlet's name. Founded in 1871, it absorbed the nearby settlement of Douglas and was later mapped, clay and sand, by the 1974 Soil Survey of Castle Rock Area. 2 digs
13 records
The town that vanished under the county's own word for it Hickory Oaks Street · 1871–1986 The survey that mapped you instead of a story about you Green Fern Point · 1902–1986
United States LindonLindon, Utah, grew from farmland first worked in 1869 by Wadley Farms, in a basin below Lindon Hill that became a recognized place around 1850. A short walk from one recorded lot stands the soft-rock Harper House, begun in 1877 by English convert Alfred William Harper and his wife Melissa. 1 dig
12 records United States HerrimanHerriman, Utah, grew from open field into subdivisions such as Rosecrest Place, where houses on West Larawood Lane were built in 2006. Nearby, Providence Hall Charter School, originally intended for neighbouring Bluffdale, relocated to Herriman before it ever opened. 1 dig
3 records United States AlbuquerqueAlbuquerque's ground holds two quieter stories beneath its streets: a 1716 land grant held by a soldier's widow, and a farming settlement called Los Griegos. Railroad platting and the city's expanding grid reduced both to street names, one of which no longer even carries its original name. 2 digs
18 records
A village that became a number then vanished Colleen Avenue Northeast · 1909–2003 A grant faded into a grid of streets Lafying Street Northeast · 1909–1988
United States ClearfieldClearfield, Utah began in 1877 as a rail siding platted onto farmland east of the Great Salt Lake, in Davis County. It grew slowly around a church, store, grain elevator and depot, then changed again as Hill Air Force Base expanded through the 1960s and 1970s and drew new population and housing to the area. 1 dig
10 records United States NaugatuckNaugatuck, Connecticut, grew up in a narrow valley floodplain where mills turned on the Naugatuck River's current, built over Waterbury Gneiss more than 500 million years old. Charles Goodyear's vulcanized rubber and later Naugahyde founded its industry, but the same river that powered the town twice tore through it, most fatally in 1955. 2 digs
16 records
Built and rebuilt on a river that kept taking it back · 1800–2025 A river that kept coming back for the valley · 1730–now
United States BristolBristol, Connecticut, began in 1742 as New Cambridge, when farm families on Fall Mountain and Chippens Hill won leave to hold winter services away from Farmington's parish. Incorporated as Bristol in 1785, it became a clockmaking city after Gideon Roberts started peddling handmade wooden clocks around 1790. 1 dig
12 records United States SimsburySimsbury, Connecticut, grew up along Hopmeadow Street, where colonial farmers, schoolteachers and bank clerks left ground that still carries their names. The record here gathers one corner of that ground: a 1711 farmhouse, the schools raised beside it, and the son who left it to fight for a country not yet formed. 1 dig
12 records United States Preston CityPreston City grew as the hub of a town whose land came by deed from Uncas's son, its First Congregational Church rooted in 1698. Nearby, an asylum opened in 1904 with 95 patients and one building, swelled to thirty structures, and closed in 1996 before the state sold its grounds for a dollar. 1 dig
8 records United States PomfretPomfret, Connecticut, grew along Pomfret Street, now a historic district, where colonial-era lives and later institutions left their mark on the land. Among its records is the death of Sarah Grosvenor in 1742, following a secret abortion that led to one of early America's first such prosecutions. 1 dig
8 records United States WindsorWindsor, Connecticut, grew from a founding settlement into a town of brick farmhouses and family burying grounds. Across two centuries it held tobacco wealth, brickmaking trade, and the lives and deaths of its earliest settlers, leaving behind the houses and gravestones that still mark its ground. 2 digs
20 records
A brickmaker built his house from his own backyard · 1595–1979 The largest brick house tobacco money built · 1595–1916
United States Rocky HillRocky Hill, Connecticut, grew around ground first claimed by John Robbins in 1638 and held by his descendants until 1914. The brick Georgian house raised on that land around 1767 outlasted the tavern-keeping family that built it, and the town around it saw pewtersmiths, ministers and ballplayers born and buried within its bounds. 1 dig
10 records
A record of ground, not a magazine.

Nothing here was commissioned. Each place is assembled from its own sources, published at the resolution of the ground rather than the point, and reviewed again when the record changes. No page reports a person.