scrub

what i find surprising is all of these photos, were taken by the war department. what else did they photograph ? we were under government spies , all these years. wonder what will show up after,we are dead,and buried??

They were doing a survey of agricultural resources and conditions, and looking for spots away from the coasts to evacuate if they had to.

Agricultural resourse surveys, yes. And documenting the condition of American farmland. Notice in these photos how the vegetation is very sparce. That is because the topsoil has been eroded away after a hundred years of neglecting the soil. Up until the late 1930's many farmers simply removed the trees from the forrests and planted crops on the naturally rich soil. After a few years the natural nutrients were depleted and crops wouldn't grow so the farmer moved to "new ground" and left the old fields. Since there wasn't enough nutrients in the soil to support plants, the soils eroded. During and after WWII fertilizers became more affordable and farmers started practicing better farming techniques.

It looks to me like these photos might have been taken in the southern pinelands, which can have sandy soil and support the type of flora you see pictured.

Lantern slides are positive transparent photographs made on glass and viewed with the aid of a "magic lantern", the predecessor of the slide projector. www. nga.gov> online editions

Annette Cadell Thank you Annette for providing this information

I'd like to be able to place it for you but there are actually two Brown's Mountains that I know of, in N.S.W. One is NW of Nowra; the other NW of Bega, being the route of the Snowy Mountains Highway from the coast to the high country.

trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/163798459# - this pic appeared in the Sydney Mail on 2nd October, 1897 ...accompanying an article on Nimmitabel, near Cooma, in Southern NSW.