Technology & Engineering

Buffalo City got its name when a company from Buffalo, New York, implemented plans for a massive logging operation of 168,000 acres of ancient cypress and juniper trees in a swampy area of the Dare County mainland in eastern North Carolina in 1888. It was an exciting time as 300 Russians, as well as local black and white men, began to cut timber and lay 100 miles of train tracks for locomotives to transport the logs out of the forest. A town was soon built with approximately 50 houses, a hotel, post office, school, general store, and church. While it was not considered a city, it was the largest town in Dare County at the time. When the timber boom was over 20 years later and jobs were scarce, the place was the ideal location for making illegal whiskey, and it soon became known as the moonshine capital of the world. Today, nothing remains of the boomtown. The forest has reclaimed the land.

George County, named for Sen. James Z. George, became one of Mississippi's youngest counties in 1910. Located east of the DeSoto National Forest, west of Mobile, and north of Pascagoula, the county is embedded in the pine belt, a region that stretches from the Carolinas along the Gulf Coast to Texas. The founders unapologetically boasted that George County was formed by combining the best land from neighboring Greene and Jackson Counties. As the only city in the county, Lucedale was the obvious choice to become the county seat. Lucedale was named for Gregory M. Luce, the Michigan native who saw opportunity in George County's natural resources. Business generated by Luce and other like-minded entrepreneurs set in motion the ongoing development and evolution of local agriculture, transportation, infrastructure, and commerce.

Since the first recorded lobster catch in 1605, the Maine lobster fishery has grown into a multibillion-dollar force. Cathy Billings of the University of Maine Lobster Institute embarks on a journey from trap to plate, introducing readers to lobstermen, boat builders, bait dealers, marine suppliers and the expansive industry that revolves around the fishery. Maine lobster families extend generations back with an eye to their legacies. Strides in sustainability have been a hallmark of the Maine fishery throughout the centuries, from the time lobstermen themselves introduced conservation measures in the mid-1800s. Today, Maine's lobster fishery is a model of a co-managed, sustainable fishery. The people who work Maine's lobster fishery have developed a coastal economy with an international influence and deep history.

Iowa has a history with grapevines that goes back more than a century. New York lawyer Hiram Barney obtained a tract of land in southeast Iowa as part of the Half-Breed program following the American Indian Wars and created the White Elk Winery. German settlers in Amana tended community vineyards for communal wines. Before Prohibition, the Council Bluffs Grape Growers Association grew grapes and shipped them eastward by the ton. In the early 1900s, the state was among the nation’s top producers of grapes. Pesticides, weather and government subsidies ended the time of the vines of the prairie until their recent return. Author John N. Peragine details the rise, fall and resurgence of the industry in the Hawkeye State.