Historical Photo Collections

Angel Island Immigration Photographic Collection
207.212.67.173/angel_island/
Angel Island—known as the Ellis Island of the West—was the immigration point for many Asians entering the United States. This site contains four pages of Angel Island photos, including boats, people and even slides of blood work taken from immigrants.

Images of Kansas City
images.kclibrary.org/photographs
The Kansas City Public Library’s special collections department has digitized 14,000 photos and placed them in this searchable collection. You’ll find images of buildings, bridges, streets, parades, charitable organizations, schools and churches. The photographs were taken from the 1870s up to the early 1990s.

The Photography Collection, Western History, Denver Public Library
gowest.coalliance.org
Did your family follow the great migration West? Search this database of 80,000 images and catalog records of Native Americans, pioneers, early railroads, mining, Denver and Colorado towns. Colorado is the focus, but you’ll find images from other areas, too.

Small Town America
memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/nyplhtml/dennhome.html
See how your Mid-Atlantic ancestors’ town looked a century ago through 12,000 photographs of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from the 1850s to the 1910s. These views of buildings, businesses, street scenes, people, events, natural disasters, agriculture and industry are part of the Library of Congress’ American Memory Collection.