Shasta City, CA Photo - A Vintage barn at Shasta State Historic Park in The Now-Deserted Town of Shasta City, west of Redding, California

A vintage barn at Shasta State Historic Park in the now-deserted town of Shasta City, west of Redding. There, a row of old, half-ruined, brick buildings reminds passing motorists that Shasta City, the lusty "Queen City" of California's northern mining district, once stood on this site. These ruins and some of the nearby roads, cottages, and cemeteries are all silent but eloquent vestiges of the intense activity that was centered here during the California gold rush. The old county courthouse there has been restored to its appearance in 1861, the year when it was converted from commercial uses to become the Shasta County Courthouse. Today the building is filled with historical exhibits, and a collection of historic California artwork that make it the central figure of Shasta State Historic Park.

Carol M. Highsmith (born 1946) is a photographer, author, and publisher who has photographed all 50 of the United States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico for 30 years. She specializes in documenting architecture, ranging from the monumental to the everyday and whimsical. Highsmith is donating her life ’s work of more than 100,000 images, copyright-free, to the Library of Congress, which established a rare one-person archive. Out of 14 million images, the Carol M. Highsmith collection is featured in the top six alongside of Mathew Brady and Dorethea Lange. Credit line: Photographs in the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

Credit line: The Jon B. Lovelace Collection of California Photographs in Carol M. Highsmith's America Project, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.