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.
125 places · 53 localities · last reviewed 12 September 2026
United States
SimsburySimsbury grew along Hopmeadow Street from a 1711 farmhouse into a town of schools, a bank and a memorial hall. David Phelps raised that farmhouse; his son Elisha died in 1776 supplying Revolutionary War troops. Later generations, including the Beldens, built on what he left behind.
1 dig
12 records United States Preston CityPreston City grew as the hub of a Connecticut town whose land came by deed from Uncas's son. It held a Congregational church from 1698 and a Baptist church from 1812, then a psychiatric hospital that opened for 95 years and closed for none, sold by the state for a dollar. 1 dig
8 records United States PomfretPomfret, Connecticut, grew up along the spine now known as Pomfret Street, ground that carries a colonial-era tragedy alongside the ordinary passage of schools and churches through the town's centre. 1 dig
8 records United States Salt Lake CitySalt Lake City's ground holds a war ended by a handshake, a fortune's ambition stalled mid-build, and a killing on the Jordan River decades before any street existed. From an 1857 mansion to an abandoned 1980s megaproject, the record here moves between peace-making, unfinished grandeur and old violence. 3 digs
26 records
47 records
35 records
20 records
10 records United States BostonBoston's ground near Congress Street carries the weight of a single violent night: on March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired on a crowd, killing five men, including Crispus Attucks. That corner, once colonial Quaker Lane, later burned in the Great Fire of 1872 before rebuilding into the Financial District known today. 1 dig
11 records United States PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia's Independence Hall, built as the Pennsylvania State House and completed in 1753, held the vote for independence on July 4, 1776, and the signing of the parchment a month later. The same room later drafted the Constitution, in 1787. 1 dig
15 records United States CharlestonCharleston's Court House Square holds ground that carries centuries in layers: pirates condemned nearby in 1718, a colonial statehouse burned in 1788, and James Hoban's courthouse raised over its ruins between 1790 and 1792, a design he then carried to Washington to build the President's House. 1 dig
14 records United States ProvoProvo's record turns on one building doing two lives: raised in 1892 as the Brigham Young Academy, one of the largest school buildings in the Rocky Mountain West, it stood empty and rotting for nearly twenty years before its 2001 rededication as the Provo City Library. 1 dig
6 records
12 records United States Preston CityPreston City grew as the hub of a Connecticut town whose land came by deed from Uncas's son. It held a Congregational church from 1698 and a Baptist church from 1812, then a psychiatric hospital that opened for 95 years and closed for none, sold by the state for a dollar. 1 dig
8 records United States PomfretPomfret, Connecticut, grew up along the spine now known as Pomfret Street, ground that carries a colonial-era tragedy alongside the ordinary passage of schools and churches through the town's centre. 1 dig
8 records United States Salt Lake CitySalt Lake City's ground holds a war ended by a handshake, a fortune's ambition stalled mid-build, and a killing on the Jordan River decades before any street existed. From an 1857 mansion to an abandoned 1980s megaproject, the record here moves between peace-making, unfinished grandeur and old violence. 3 digs
26 records
The trap on the Jordan River
9661 South 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
LehiLehi, Utah, took shape after the March 1849 killings of Timpanogos men at Battle Creek, an event that led American Fork to wall itself in fear of reprisal and that shadows ground later given over to farmland, subdivisions and, in 2016, Skyridge High School.
5 digs47 records
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
HighlandHighland, Utah, sits on the old bed and shoreline sand of Lake Bonneville, ground once farmed and later platted into subdivisions such as Dry Creek Highlands and Blessing Rock at Beacon Hill. Builders raised houses there through the 2000s and 2010s, and ownership since has passed through families, lenders, and trusts.
5 digs35 records
An address, and nothing else on record
5942 West Horizon Drive · 2004–2025
Some ground has only ever been ground
5942 West Southern Cross Court · 2004–2021
A lakebed sold as farmland became a subdivision lot
Highland · 2005–2019
A lake bottom platted, sold, and refinanced
West Broadleaf Hollow Circle · 2014–2020
United States
WindsorWindsor, Connecticut, holds two brick houses raised a generation apart: one built by a brickmaker from clay dug across the road around 1825, the other by a tobacco farmer whose crop made him rich enough to outbuild the town's wood-framed houses, around 1860.
2 digs20 records
A brickmaker built his house from his own backyard
Windsor · 1595–1979
The largest brick house tobacco money built
Windsor · 1595–1916
United States
Rocky HillRocky Hill grew around ground first claimed in 1638, when John Robbins took land that his family would hold for nearly three centuries. His grandson raised a brick house and tavern there around 1767, and the town's story since has passed through pewtersmiths, ministers and ballplayers.
1 dig10 records United States BostonBoston's ground near Congress Street carries the weight of a single violent night: on March 5, 1770, British soldiers fired on a crowd, killing five men, including Crispus Attucks. That corner, once colonial Quaker Lane, later burned in the Great Fire of 1872 before rebuilding into the Financial District known today. 1 dig
11 records United States PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia's Independence Hall, built as the Pennsylvania State House and completed in 1753, held the vote for independence on July 4, 1776, and the signing of the parchment a month later. The same room later drafted the Constitution, in 1787. 1 dig
15 records United States CharlestonCharleston's Court House Square holds ground that carries centuries in layers: pirates condemned nearby in 1718, a colonial statehouse burned in 1788, and James Hoban's courthouse raised over its ruins between 1790 and 1792, a design he then carried to Washington to build the President's House. 1 dig
14 records United States ProvoProvo's record turns on one building doing two lives: raised in 1892 as the Brigham Young Academy, one of the largest school buildings in the Rocky Mountain West, it stood empty and rotting for nearly twenty years before its 2001 rededication as the Provo City Library. 1 dig
6 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.