A Tour of an Era

A Tour of an Era

I went into this project with a mind like that of a travel guide as I tried to make this more of an informative tour than a straight tour of the areas I chose. I chose my ten areas after much thought and even though some were quite difficult to write on I was still able to give an entertaining guide through each of the ten sections. I wrote them in the order that they were on the paper, as this seemed to be a nice timeline to go by. I hope you will enjoy the tour!

I decided to have my World War I location be in Europe, more specifically the battlefield of Ypres, Belgium. This area was the site of some of the worst fighting in the first World War. The area is mostly large open fields surrounding a small market town. The town of Ypres is fairly small with many of the narrow intersecting roads that are common in these rural towns. It's what was called a junction town during World War II because of all the roads running through the town. The surrounding countryside would have been cut with trenches. After the Great War the countryside was pockmarked with shell craters, trenches and the town was almost completely gone. The area was barren of trees during the war, a result of the constant shelling the area received.

The area called the Stirling Castle, which was a German pillbox, were over five thousand Australian troops were either killed or wounded on September 20th, 1917. Looking out from this pillbox you have a clear view for miles of the battlefield, and being at an elevated position you can see why the amount of dead was so high. In October of 1917 there was an unusually high amount of rain which filled the trenches and shell holes.

The view was described by war photographer Frank Hurley "I pushed on up the duck-board track to Stirling Castle Ð'- a mound of powdered brick and from where there is to be had a magnificent panorama of the battlefield Ð'... About here the ground had the appearance of having been ploughed by a great canal excavator, and then reploughed and turned over and over again Ð'... Through this the wounded had to drag themselves and those mortally wounded pass out their young lives". This description was the best one I had come into during my research of what the battlefield must have looked like.

Moving into Prohibition I decided to look at Al Capone's "hideout" in Couderay, Wisconsin. This was more of a compound than a hideout. The area is surrounded by a very thick stone wall, and also had a guard tower at the main entrance. There are a total of ten buildings on this estate, including a one-cell jail with fenced in exercise yard.

The compound was designed so Capone and his men could fend off an attack by a rival gang or the Feds. The area encompasses a total of forty-five acres on the water of Lake Chippewa. The buildings still stand today and it has been turned into a tourist attraction, although the look of the place hasn't changed. The estate would have been manned by members of Capone's gang year round; this must have been interesting to the locals. The garage was built to house eight limousines, meaning that it is one of the largest buildings on the estate.

The main house is made of stone, more than likely for its bullet resistance; the plain exterior though hides the lavishly furnished interior. One has to wonder what kind of meetings took place in this home and the people that must have been there. It would have been a sight to see.

I chose to look at the Tennessee Valley Authority as my New Deal Program of choice. This was set up to help control flooding in the Tennessee Valley and to sell electricity. This agency is one of the New Deal programs that still exists today, its powers have been expanding ever since its inception. The agency built many dams and set up numerous power transmission lines, which provided power to areas that did not have electricity before.

The agency hired over 200, 000 people, which would have been something to see because construction jobs today have very few people on them in comparison. In all 34 dams were built and during the 1940's the largest hydroelectric growth was seen as twelve plants were built. These dams eventually were not enough as the Tennessee Valley Authority built several nuclear power plants in the late 1970's. A 650 mile nine foot navigation channel was built along the Tennessee River to help reduce flooding.

This was quite an undertaking and brought power to many parts of the country that would not have seen it for many years had this not been set up. The jobs it also created were a boost to that area and others as workers came from all over to work on these dams and other hydro-power projects.

This section deals with Herbert Hoover and the meeting he had with the major business and labor leaders in this country after the stock market crash. This meeting was one of great importance and may have helped out country out immensely. During this meeting the heads of all the major businesses and labor unions such as U.S. Steel, and the United Auto Workers met with President Hoover to discuss a way to get this country through the depression.

He basically told them no more lay-offs, no more strikes, and no more calling for increased wages. To have been in that room with all that power must have been something, and to hear the President tell these men what they were going to do; I can only imagine seeing their mouths hanging open while he is telling them this. Of course I would think it was put more eloquently than that by the president.

I would imagine that he met with them in the Oval Office being in this room one is overtaken by the history of the room and the great men who have stood in it before, is something that overwhelms people and allows the President to get his points across better than in some board room.

My next little tour will be of the Yalta Conference in February of 1945. This will look at Roosevelt during this conference as well as the general setting of it as well. President Roosevelt was in very poor health at this time, he would die a short time later, and looking at pictures of this you can see that he is not a well man. When you look at pictures of the conference you will notice many top-level military brass in the background, this was standard fare at these meetings because they were after all in a major war still. You have the staged photos of the group as well as images from inside the conference room with the attendants seated around a large round table. The talk that must have gone on here was probably an interesting banter between the three major players in the war. Especially the meeting one of the nights when Churchill and Stalin drank and talked, it provides for a very interesting