Transportation

To celebrate American ingenuity and generate public appreciation for our nation's transportation history, Teaching with Historic Places is featuring on the Web the following lesson plans that are related to America's transportation revolution. These lessons, based on sites listed in the National Register of Historic Places, are free and ready for immediate classroom use by students in history and social studies classes.

• Allegheny Portage Railroad: Developing Transportation Technology (23)
Follow 19th-century travelers as they cross the treacherous Allegheny Mountains using an innovative inclined railway. (National Park/National Historic Landmark)

• America's Space Program: Exploring a New Frontier (101)
Discover how NASA, private industry, and research institutions across the country cooperated to develop and implement the complex technology that enabled man to land on the moon. (National Historic Landmark)

• Chattanooga, Tennessee: Train Town (52)
Examine how geography and boosterism influenced the placement of rail lines, which then stimulated the growth of towns such as Chattanooga.

• The Building of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (10)
Assess the importance of America's early canal system and its economic and social effects. (National Park)

• Floyd Bennett Field: Naval Aviation’s Home in Brooklyn (120)
Learn about the vital role played by naval aviators delivering aircraft to combat-bound units in the Pacific during WWII, and the women workers on the home front who helped in one of U.S. history's greatest industrial feats. (National Park)

• Going-to-the-Sun Road: A Model of Landscape Engineering (95)
Learn about some of the practical problems of constructing roads in difficult terrain and about the added challenge of building in such a way as to enhance, rather than damage, fragile and beautiful places such as Glacier National Park. (National Park/National Historic Landmark/Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site)

• Glen Echo Park: Center for Education and Recreation (24)
Understand why the Washington Railway and Electric Company of Washington, D.C., which was responsible for the installation of the electric railway system or "trolley system" throughout the city and its suburbs, purchased the Chautauqua lands and expanded the small amusement park that had already been built on the site. (National Park)

• Liberty Ships and Victory Ships, America's Lifeline in War (116)
Learn how the United States mobilized a massive construction effort to build a large merchant fleet to serve in war and peace. (The SS Red Oak Victory is part of a National Park. The SS Jeremiah O'Brien and the SS Lane Victory are National Historic Landmarks.)

• Navesink Lighthouse and Robbins Reef Lighthouse: Lighting the Way through New York Bay (131)
Learn about two historic lighthouses that illustrate how technological advancements contributed to maritime safety and about the isolated, often routine, but sometimes heroic lives led by their keepers. (Navesink Light Station is a National Historic Landmark)

• The Old Court House in St. Louis: Yesterday & Today (9)
Examine St. Louis's handsome Courthouse as a gathering place for pioneers heading west and a possible option for being the center of the transportation revolution. (National Park)

• The Penniman House: A Whaling Story (112)
Meet Captain Edward Penniman, and learn about 19th-century whaling in southeastern Massachusetts and how the whaling industry impacted Penniman's family and life. (National Park)

• Roadside Attractions (6)
Follow the highways of the 1920s and 1930s, exploring the whimsical, extravagant architecture that came with American auto culture.

• The Siege and Battle of Corinth: A New Kind of War (113)
Understand how newly developed technologies affected two military engagements and one tiny town in Mississippi during the Civil War. (National Park/National Historic Landmark)

• Skagway: Gateway to the Klondike (75)
Learn how Skagway, a transportation gateway for commerce and tourism, serves as an example of how a frontier town survived the end of its boomtown era. (National Park/National Historic Landmark)

• The United States Air Force Academy: Founding a Proud Tradition (114)
Learn how the expansion of military air power in the first half of the 20th century led to the establishment of the United States Air Force and the Air Force Academy. (National Historic Landmark)

• Wheat Farms, Flour Mills, and Railroads: A Web of Interdependence (106)
Examine the inextricable connections binding railroads, North Dakota wheat fields, and Minnesota flour mills during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (National Park/Includes Pillsbury A Mill, a National Historic Landmark)

• Wright Brothers National Memorial: Site of the First Controlled Powered Flight (109)
Discover why the Wright Brothers chose the Outer Banks of North Carolina to conduct their flight experiments, how they achieved controlled powered flight in 1903, and how their accomplishments have been commemorated. (National Park)

 
To learn more about TwHP's other lessons, visit the Lesson Plan Descriptions page.