Earth Day

Siskiyou National Forest in California; detail of a DOCUMERICA image. (National Archives ID 542848)

DOCUMERICA Project

For the DOCUMERICA Project (1971–77), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) hired freelance photographers to capture images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970s. The National Archives digitized part of the series "Documerica" (Local ID 412-DA). More than 15,000 of these images are available in the National Archives Catalog. You can read about the project in the National Archives exhibition “Searching for the Seventies: The DOCUMERICA Photography Project” and see the items on National Archives’  DOCUMERICA image collection on Flikr.

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Featured Document: Earth Day poster by Artist Robert Rauschenberg (Records of the U.S. Information Agency)

Featured Document Display

Earth Day 50th Anniversary (2020)

 

Virtual Events

View these recorded author talks by Richard J. Lazarus and Adam Sowards on YouTube:

Education Resources & Lesson Plans for Teachers

• DOCUMERICA Project
• Index to Photographs of Social and Economic Life, Environmental Conditions and Cleanup Operations on the Pribilof Islands, Alaska, created, 1996—2006, documenting the period ca. 1886–2006. Available in AAD, NARA's Electronic records database
  • Anti-railroad Propaganda Poster—The Growth of Regionalism, 1800–1860
  • Lewis and Clark Expedition
  • Migration North to Alaska
  • Photographs and Pamphlet About Nuclear Fallout
     

Record Groups of Agencies Dealing in Environmental Affairs

• Environmental Protection Agency, RG 412
• Forest Service, RG 95
• National Park Service, RG 79
• National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, RG 370

Presidential Engagement on Earth Day

• Presidential Message on the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day (2020)
• Here's Why the U.S. and China Are Signing the Historic Paris Agreement on Earth Day (2016)
• President Announces Wetlands Initiative on Earth Day (2004)
• Earth Day 2000: History of Earth Day (2000)
• Nixon Library Marks the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day

NARA Publications and Blogs

• “Searching for the Seventies: The DOCUMERICA Photography Project” (Prologue Magazine)
• "DOCUMERICA: Snapshots of Crisis and Cure in the 1970s" (Prologue Magazine)
• "Pitch In on Earth Day!" (NARAtions)
• "Forty Years of Cleaning Up America: Honoring Earth Day with a Look at Photographs from Project DOCUMERICA" (NARAtions)
• Spotlight Photographer – John H. White (Unwritten Record)

• Give a Hoot! Don’t Pollute: Earth Day with Woodsy Owl (Unwritten Record)