Unearthing Florida: Bureau of Archaeological Research

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the artifacts that archaeologists unearth in Florida?

The State of Florida’s Bureau of Archaeological Research, or BAR, in Tallahassee has a wonderful conservation lab and collections facility. This is where the artifacts found ...

Asheville Hotel Building

Asheville Elks Lodge #608 (now known as the Asheville Hotel Building) opened their new home on June 14, 1915, (Flag Day) with great fanfare and attention. Located at the corner of Haywood and Walnut streets and designed by Smith and ...

Unearthing Florida: Newnan's Lake Canoes

When lakes dry up, amazing things are sometimes brought to light; such was the case at Newnan’s Lake, where ancient canoes were exposed.

2000 was a very dry year, and as Florida’s lakes and sinkholes shrank, sunken water craft were revealed. ...

Arcade Building (Grove Arcade)

Dr. Edwin Wiley Grove envisioned the Arcade Building, built between 1926 and 1929, as a massive commercial mall with covered pedestrian thoroughfares and rooftop terraces surmounted by a skyscraper tower. It was the most ambitious project conceived by Grove, a ...

Church of St. Lawrence

Rafael Guastavino (1842-1908), an architect and builder of Spanish origin, came to Asheville to work on the Biltmore House in the mid-1890s. After completing his work at Biltmore, Guastavino settled in nearby Black Mountain. He soon declared the city needed ...

Battery Park Hotel

The 14-story Battery Park Hotel stands as an architectural and historic monument to Asheville's tourism and development boom of the 1920s. The hotel was erected in 1924 by Edwin W. Grove "as a capstone of his excavation and leveling of ...

Downtown Asheville Historic District

Established in 1797 as the trading center and seat of the newly created Buncombe County, Asheville (then called Morristown) grew steadily through the 19th century as the economic and government center of western North Carolina. Following the arrival of the ...

Unearthing Florida: S.S. Tarpon

The SS Tarpon was one of the unfortunate steamships in Florida’s maritime history.

For over three decades SS Tarpon, built in the late Nineteenth Century, never missed its weekly trips hauling cargo and passengers along the gulf coast, but on August ...

Unearthing Florida:U.S.S. Massachusetts

The USS Massachusetts rests silently beneath 26 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico south of Pensacola- but unlike many shipwrecks she was put there on purpose.

At one time Massachusetts was a marvel of modern engineering. First launched in ...

Unearthing Florida: Urca de Lima

In 1715, a Spanish fleet of 11 ships sailing from Cuba was struck by a hurricane off the coast of Fort Pierce, Florida. Only one was spared-the Urca de Lima.

The other ships in the fleet broke apart in the storm, ...