Lee Vining was named after Leroy Vining, who founded the town in 1852 as a mining camp. His life came to an untimely end when he accidentally shot himself at the nearby town of Aurora, Nevada. In 1926, the town was laid out by Chris Mattly and named "Lakeview",[3] but when a post office was sought in 1928, it was learned that another town, Lakeview, California already had the name. The unique name of Lee Vining was chosen in 1953. The place was also called Poverty Flat for its unfavorable conditions for agriculture. The economy of Lee Vining relies largely on tourism, since it is the closest town to the east entrance of Yosemite National Park, and is near other tourist destinations such as Mono Lake, the ghost town of Bodie, popular trout fishing destinations, and June Mountain and Mammoth Mountain ski areas and the June Lake recreational area.
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.
