Communities in the United States are as diverse as the many peoples, cultures, and natural environments that characterize the nation. To celebrate the central role of community life in America, Teaching with Historic Places has posted a sampling of classroom-ready lesson plans that focus on the individual history and character of each subject community. They vary from American Indian villages to Colonial religious settlements, from early industrial towns to pioneer prairie communities, and from quintessential "home towns" to enclaves defined by ethnic or cultural groups. TwHP lessons are based on sites listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The Fortieth Anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act lesson is more generic, guiding students to discover the impact of the Act on their own communities. All lessons are free and ready for immediate classroom use by teachers and students in history and social studies classes.

• Bethlehem, Pennsylvania: A Moravian Settlement in Colonial America
  Learn why Moravians immigrated to the New World and how the towns they established embodied their religious beliefs.

• Castolon: A Meeting Place of Two Cultures
  Compare the Spanish and Anglo influences on settlements along the Texas-Mexico border region of the Rio Grande.

• Chicago's Black Metropolis: Understanding History through a Historic Place
  Examine the history of this "city-within-a-city," a self-supporting African-American community that prospered from the late 19th century until the 1930s.

• Frederica: An 18th-Century Planned Community
  Discover why this British settlement was built and how it functioned as Great Britain and Spain each struggled to control land from Charleston to St. Augustine.

• Fortieth Anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act
  Learn how the National Historic Preservation Act has affected your community in this lesson, prepared for the History Channel's Save Our History initiative.

• The Freeman School: Building Prairie Communities
  Examine this one-room school in Nebraska and consider the important role it played in the community during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

• Gran Quivira: A Blending of Cultures in a Pueblo Indian Village
  Examine the changing lifeways of the inhabitants of this village from the 7th century to the arrival of the Spanish in the early 17th century.

• Harry Truman and Independence, Missouri: "This is Where I Belong"
  Learn why the life of the 33rd U.S. President serves as an example of civic duty and explore the town that helped form his character.

• Hopewell Furnace: A Pennsylvania Iron-making Plantation
  Explore how Hopewell functioned as the center of a self-contained rural community of 200-300 people, all of whose work was directly or indirectly related to the production of iron.

• Knife River: Early Village Life on the Plains
  Discover the complex culture and trading economy of the Hidatsa and Mandan tribes in North Dakota during the 18th century, as seen by anthropologists and artists.
  

• Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial:
  Forging Greatness during Lincoln's Youth
  Meet the people and learn of events that influenced the development of Abraham Lincoln's character and personality as a youth on the Indiana frontier.
  

• Lincoln Home National Historic Site:
  A Place of Growth and Memory
  Learn how Abraham Lincoln's belief in freedom and democracy, his eloquence, and the support of family and community propelled him to the White House and uplifted him through the turbulent Civil War.

• Locke and Walnut Grove: Havens for Early Asian Immigrants in California
  Understand the experience of early Asian immigrants and the obstacles they encountered as they struggled to make a living and develop their own community in America.

• The Mary McLeod Bethune Council House: African American Women Unite for Change
  Learn about Mary McLeod Bethune and how she and the organization she founded promoted political and social change for African American women.

• Mechanics Hall: Symbol of Pride and Industry
  Examine how the advent of industrialization in 19th-century America impacted the workforce in New England's Blackstone River Valley, and learn how the hall built for a workers' association became a hub of community life.

• New Philadelphia: An Multiracial Townn on the Illinois Frontier
  Learn about Free Frank McWorter and how archeology can help tell the story of the interracial town he founded in the years before the Civil War.

• Paterson, New Jersey: America's Silk City
  Learn how life in a mill town revolved around factory work and about the economic and cultural divides that separated workers and managers.

• Skagway: Gateway to the Klondike
  Join the stampede for gold when over 100,000 prospectors set out for the Klondike, and learn about the transformation of one destination into a permanent community.

• The War Relocation Centers of World War II: When Fear Was Stronger than Justice
  Learn what led the U.S. government to confine nearly 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry to relocation centers in remote areas of the country during World War II, and examine life in these self-contained communities, which were often the largest towns in their isolated areas.

• Waterford, Virginia: From Mill Town to National Historic Landmark
  Examine continuity and change in this rural Virginia town from its founding as a Quaker agricultural community and mill town in the 18th century to today.

• Ybor City: Cigar Capital of the World
  Discover how immigrant cigar makers in this Tampa, Florida community adapted to life in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century while maintaining their ethnic identity.

 
To learn more about TwHP's other lessons, visit the Lesson Plan Descriptions page.