But the attraction of this Manhattan crossroads is more than one night only. The role that Times Square plays in America’s largest city has been well captured by the pictures taken by LIFE photographers over the decades.

Times Square was given its name on April 8, 1904, soon after the New York Times set up offices nearby. It developed into the glitziest spot in the city, thanks to its abundance of entertainment spots and neon billboards.

The photos here capture the excitement and the hubbub, the celebrations and the showplaces. One of the most jarring pictures in the collection is in fact a rare photo of Times Square looking quiet and serene, thanks to a taxi strike that left its boulevards nearly free of traffic. (The idea of Times Square without people later became the centerpiece of a nightmare sequence in the 2001 Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky.)

The collection includes two celebrity portraits. One is a natural for the location: playwright Moss Hart and his wife, actress Kitty Carlisle. The other is of Robert Redford at the time when his career was taking off thanks to his performance in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and the photo is memorable for the way the actor’s Western aesthetic contrasts with the gritty backdrop of Times Square in 1969.

One of the most famous photos in the history of LIFE magazine was shot in Times Square, on a day when the space erupted in spontaneous celebration. It was 1945, and Japan was about to surrender, bringing an end to World War II. One exuberant man was going from woman to woman, planting his lips on them (and he was far from the only one doing so) when LIFE’s Albert Eisenstadt took the picture known as “The Kiss.” The photo has had a problematic afterlife, as a woman claiming to be the nurse in the photo came forward to describe the kiss as terrifying from her perspective, but the image nonetheless captures the national mood at the long-awaited end of World War II.

The crowds that day indicate the particular hold of Times Square on the civic imagination. It’s the place where people magnetically streamed because something important had happened, and they wanted to share the experience with others.

This photo is from a staged essay from 1940 on the “White Collar Girl,” the subject of the best-selling novel Kitty Foyle that was later adapted into a movie; here Carol Lorell, who resembled the movie’s star, Ginger Rogers, portrayed a scene in which the White Collar Girl, alone amid the glitz of Times Square, had finished her workday and was unsure to do with the rest of her evening.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Times Square on Dec. 31, 1941.

Gordon Coster/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square in New York City on New Year’s Eve, as 1941 turned to 1942.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Military police in Times Square on New Year’s Eve, as 1941 turned to 1942.

Gordon Coster The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The motorcade of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved through Times Square, 1944.

William Vandivert/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A Times Square billboard for the Broadway show Mexican Hayride, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square billboard, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Pigeons and loiterers (visitors) gathered in cement island in the middle of Broadway in Times Square, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Customers peered at the wares inside a small, brightly-lit Times Square watch shop, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

A strolling blind musician played guitar and harmonica along Broadway at night in Times Square in 1944.

Peter Stackpole/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, 1944.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Servicemen made calls to faraway family and friends from booths at the GI phone center in Times Square, 1944.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Getty Images

Sailors looked for fun in a curfew-closed Times Square.

(Photo by Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation)

V-J Day celebrations in Times Square, August 14, 1945.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day celebrations in Times Square, August 14, 1945.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day celebrations in Times Square, August 14, 1945.

William C. Shrout The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

V-J Day kiss, Times Square, Aug. 14, 1945.

Alfred Eisenstaedt The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Times Square was uncharacteristically quiet during a 1949 taxi strike.

Yale Joel/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Traffic congestion on Broadway looking north from 45th Street in Times Square, 1954.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Times Square, February 1954.

Andreas Feininger/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The cast of ballet Fancy Free danced in the middle of Times Square, 1958.

Gordon Parks/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Playwright Moss Hart with his wife, actress Kitty Carlisle, in Times Square, 1959.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Robert Redford in Times Square, between meetings, 1969.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Robert Redford hailed a cab in Times Square. Just a few blocks away, at the Biltmore Theater on 47th Street, was where the actor got his first major notices as the star of Neil Simon’s 1963 Broadway play, Barefoot in the Park.

John Dominis The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The stroke of midnight began a new year, new century and new millennium as people celebrated in Times Square on Jan. 1, 2000.

Ted Thai/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The post Times Square: The Ultimate Gathering Place appeared first on LIFE.

Walt Disney spent his life dreaming impossible dreams—and usually realizing them. In 1928, he created the first animated short with synchronized sound (Steamboat Willie), which turned Mickey Mouse into an international superstar. Less than a decade later, Disney released the first full-length animated feature (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), which became the most successful American film up to that point. And in the early 1950s, Walt dreamed the most impossible dream of them all: an amusement park to end all amusement parks. He would call it Disneyland.

Though it’s hard to believe now, the park’s success was anything but certain. In fact, Roy Disney—Walt’s brother and financial partner—thought it was yet another one of “Walt’s screwy ideas,” and bankers refused to lend the company a dime. “When he started Disneyland, he didn’t have a friend in the world,” one colleague said. But Walt persevered, as always. “Sometimes I wonder if ‘common sense’ isn’t another way of saying ‘fear,’” he said. “And fear too often spells failure.”

In the face of enormous obstacles (record rainfall, labor strikes), a ballooning budget (total price tag: $17 million), and a disastrous opening day (women’s high heels sunk in Main Street’s still-drying asphalt), Disney prevailed. His “screwy idea” quickly became an enormous hit—and eventually changed popular culture forever.

Of course, he kept dreaming, making plans for an even more ambitious park (Walt Disney World) that would include a place that he felt would transform the country’s future (EPCOT). Sadly, he didn’t live to see these become a reality, but the spread of Disney parks throughout the world (Tokyo, Paris, and Shanghai among them) and the astronomical ongoing success of the company he founded prove beyond a doubt that Disney’s “impossible” dream endures.

Here are some images from LIFE’s special issue Inside the Disney Theme Parks: The Happiest Places on Earth

Cover image by imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock

Walt Disney crossed the drawbridge that serves as the entrance to Sleeping Beauty Castle in the heart of Disneyland, circa 1955. The original site of the castle proved to be overrun with feral cats, which Disney took pains to save.

David F. Smith/AP/REX/Shutterstock

Disney in his Burbank office with one of his most important artists, John Hench, discussing the map of Disneyland that Walt called “the $5 million layout.” The most important element was the castle, Walt told artist Herb Ryman, who made the first maps of Disneyland. “Make it tall enough to be seen from all around the park,” he said.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/LIFE/The Picture Collection

Disney discussed his new park with some imagineers in Los Angeles in 1954. “Imagineers” is the term Disney used to refer to the film studio creatives who brought their cinematic sensibility to the theme park, which was the first park to tell a story, like a movie.

Earl Theisen/Archive Photos/Getty

Artist William J. Koch touched up a model of the Los Angeles basin, part of “The World Beneath Us,” a show featured in Disneyland.

Bettmann/Getty

Children running through the gate of Sleeping Beauty Castle, the centerpiece of Disneyland. “I don’t want the public to see the world they live in while they’re in the park,” Disney said. “I want them to fee they’re in another world.”

Allan Grant/LIFE/The Picture Collection

A family visited the park during opening week, 1955.

Marc Wanamaker/Bison Archives

Disneyland’s opening day parade, 1955.

USC Libraries/Corbis/Getty

Walt Disney during a telecast of the official opening of the playground. The premiere was televised nationally.

Bettmann/Getty

Disney employees climbed the Matterhorn, a 1:100-scale model of the Swiss mountain, which opened as an attraction in 1959.

Ralph Crane/LIFE/The Picture Collection

In 1971 the entire Walt Disney World staff posed for a group portrait in front of Cinderella’s castle prior to the grand opening of the amusement park.

Yale Joel/LIFE/The Picture Collection

The post Disney Theme Parks: The History and the Magic appeared first on LIFE.

The one-photo limit created tough choices, because states are diverse places. Candidates for Massachusetts, for example, included a Cape Cod family vacation, an MIT classroom, and a touch football game at the Kennedy compound, among other possibilities. The photo that was finally chosen was an Alfred Eisenstaedt picture of Cape Cod fishermen, but you could argue that any of the above choices would be equally representative.

And the same is true for so many other states. Questions recurred: Do you emphasize city life or country life? The historic or the everyday? Do you favor the landscape or the people living in it?

As a whole these picture attempt, collectively, to do it all. The hope is that, when scrolling through all 51 photos at once (Washington D.C. is included), the viewer feels the sweep of the country’s variety and abundance. We have skiers in Vermont, juke joint patrons in South Carolina, commuters in Connecticut and showgirls in Nevada. While ties often went to the pictures featuring people outside and enjoying their environment, is there anything more wonderfully New Hampshire than the skepticism of a man listening to a primary speech with a weariness that captures what residents of the Granite state must endure every four years?

This exercise could be done a hundred times over, always producing different results—for California, maybe show the Academy Awards or the beach instead of the Golden Gate Bridge. Or for Pennsylvania, choose a photo from either Philadelphia or Pittsburgh, rather than couple cavorting a heart-shaped tub at a Poconos resort.

But that couple is having fun, and so are we. Please enjoy.

Children searched for creatures in tidal pool during ebb tide along the coast of Maine, 1943.

BERNARD HOFFMAN/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Voters listened to a candidate’s pitch in advance of the 1952 New Hampshire presidential primary.

Lisa Larsen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A child learned to ski in the Stowe area of Vermont, 1957.

George Silk/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Three Gloucester, Massachusetts fishermen putting in to harbor to mend nets in Cape Cod, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Sailing school in Newport, Rhode Island, 1959.

Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A father is greeted by his family after returning home from work, Fairfield County, Connecticut, 1949.

Nina Leen/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

New York City heat wave, 1953.

Peter Stackpole The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Workers building an overpass for the brand new New Jersey Turnpike, 1951.

Andreas Feininger.The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Newlyweds at a Poconos resort in Pennsylvania, 1970.

GEORGE SILK/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

From a photo essay on life in Delaware, 1938.

PETER STACKPOLE/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, 1937.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Martin Luther King Jr. addressed the crowd during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963.

Francis Miller The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, 1965.

George Silk/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

Cave exploration in West Virginia, 1946.

Albert Fenn/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

North Carolina, 1944.

GABRIEL BENZUR/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A night out at a juke joint in Greenville, South Carolina.

Margaret Bourke-White The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

President Dwight D. Eisenhower (sitting in golf cart) enjoys a round of golf at Augusta National in Georgia, 1956.

ROBERT W. KELLEY/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Miami Beach, Florida, 1940.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Selma, Alabama, 1968.

HENRY GROSKINSKY/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Springtime in Mississippi, 1949.

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Johnny Cash fished in a lake near his Tennessee home, 1969.

Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A mountain farm family, Kentucky, 1944.

Ed Clark/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

High school seniors nearing graduation, Mansfield, Ohio, 1941.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/ Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 1939.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Henry Ford II in 1948, posing at the Ford plant with newest model Ford car and models A and T, created by his father and grandfather.

Gjon Mili/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Stunt man Jack Wylie soared over the Chicago River, 1958.

Al Fenn/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Gateway Arch in St. Louis approached completion, 1965.

ROBERT W. KELLEY/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

An Arkansas country music festival, 1972.

Michael Mauney/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A woman and two children celebrated Mardi Gras in New Orleans, 1938.

WILLIAM VANDIVERT/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Running back Eugene “Mercury” Morris of West Texas State.

Bob Gomel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

In Oklahoma in 1942, agriculturists worked on the region’s catastrophic erosion problem.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/Life Pictures/Shutterstock

The Pawnee Acre Community building during a Wednesday night social, Kansas, 1952

Howard Sochurek/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Route 30 in Nebraska, 1948.

Allan Grant The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

A farm boy with his prize bull, Iowa, 1948.

Bob Landry/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Beer plant workers on a beer break, Milwaukee, 1949.

Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Men being hauled across a frozen lake in a seigh, drawn by two horses, in Northwest Angle, Minnesota, 1950.

GEORGE SILK/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Construction on Mount Rushmore, South Dakota, 1940, a year before its completion.

Alfred EisenstaedtThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Pheasant hunters, North Dakota, 1946.

Wallace Kirkland/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Students played in front of their one-room school at Rygate, Montana, April 1941.

Hansel Mieth/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Jackson Hole, Wyoming, 1948.

Alfred Eisenstaedt/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Aspen, Colorado, 1947.

Peter Stackpole/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Zuni Pueblo, New Mexico, 1948.

W. Eugene Smith/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Route 66, Arizona, 1947

Andreas Feininger The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

Native Americans herd sheep in southeastern Utah, 1947.

Loomis Dean/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Lumber workers in Idaho, 1940.

Hansel MiethThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Seattle World’s Fair, 1962.

Ralph Crane/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A deer cooled his heels along the Oregon seashore, 1960.

Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Las Vegas, 1955.

Loomis DeanThe LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The Golden Gate Bridge, photographed from a helicopter in 1952.

Margaret Bourke-White/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A 49th star was added to the American flag when Alaska joined the union, 1958.

Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Surfer Rick Grigg caught a ride at Banzai Beach, Oahu, Hawaii, 1963.

George Silk The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

The post This Land is Your Land: LIFE Photos From All 50 States appeared first on LIFE.

“America’s winter playground, home of the press agent and the bathing beauty, has gone to war,” LIFE reported in its December 18, 1942 issue. “…instead of tourists in gay sports clothes, young men of the U.S. Army Air Forces, dressed in drab khaki, drill on the green golf courses and live in hotels. For now Miami Beach is a vast army training center.”

The military was drawn to Miami for much the same reasons that vacationers have been for decades—they liked the climate and seaside location, as well as flat terrain. Within a year of the United States joining World War II, the army’s Air Forces (what it was called before the Air Force became a separate branch) had leased “almost all of the 332 resort hotels” in Miami Beach, according to LIFE.

As one history tells it, the transformation worked well, even if the effect was sometimes jarring: “The hotels,” a reporter wrote in 1943, “make good barracks. The baby pink and eggshell furniture is stored now. Three-decker army bunks jam the pastel-tinted rooms, dance floors, night clubs.”

LIFE’s photos, taken by Myron Davis and William C. Shrout, capture the juxtaposition between Miami’s picture-postcard surroundings and the seriousness of the Army’s mission. Soldiers cram into baseball stadium stands to take a course on chemical warfare. Future mess hall cooks learn their trade in resort kitchens. Palms trees sway in the background as soldiers are pushed through the exercises meant to toughen them up for combat.

The few pictures that might be mistaken for classic beach vacation photos are the ones of shirtless soldiers rushing into the water. In those shots, there is no hint of the hell they could be headed for, once they were done in Miami.

Army recruits exercised on a Miami Beach golf course in 1942; the buildings in the background were used as classrooms.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers took swimming lessons in the pool at the Roney Plaza hotel, Miami Beach, 1942.

William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers performed calisthenitcs that were followed by an ocean swim, Miami, 1942.

William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soliders in training took an ocean swim, Miami Beach, 1942.

William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers trained at Miami Beach, 1942.

William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers took an ocean swim, Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers swam and played in the ocean, Miami Beach, 1942.

William C. Shrout/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers waited to get into the mess hall in the Hotel Evans, Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Army recruits took aptitude tests in a movie theater, Miami, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Men from the 578th Squadron took a break from their training in the courtyard of the Breakwater Hotel, Miami, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A Miami restaurant was converted into a mess hall, Miami, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The lobby of the Hotel Evans was converted into an office space for soldiers, Miami, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The stock exchange on Collins Avenue in Miami was converted into a clinic for soldiers who were having problems with their feet, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

These weren’t standard barracks, but officer candidates had to clean and prepare their rooms for daily inspection, Miami, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Army roll call was held outside one of the civilian buildings taken over for the training of Army recruits, Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Army recruits trained to be cooks and bakers in a makeshift classroom in what was the Drake Hotel’s cigar store and coffeeshop, Miami, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Army recruits lined up to enter a building taken over by the military, Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers drilled on a field in Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

A clothier shop was catering to Army needs, Miami, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

An Army class in chemical warfare was taught in the grandstand of the Flamingo Park Baseball Field, Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Soldiers trained in Miami Beach, 1942.

Myron Davis/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The post When Miami Beach Went to War appeared first on LIFE.

The walls of the Haglia Sophia tell a story that goes beyond the compelling Christian iconography. It’s also the story of the history of a country where the cultural currents of West and East have long bumped up against each other.

Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to also call himself a Christian, established the city of Constantinople in 324 A.D., and rulers of what was known as the Byzantine Empire erected great churches decorated with elaborately constructed mosaics. No church was more impressive than the Hagia Sophia, which was built in 537 A.D. for centuries reigned as the largest house of worship on Earth.

When Turks took over Constantinople in 1453, they remade the church into a mosque, and in the process plastered over many of the mosaics with Christian themes. The building and its artworks sustained further damage over the centuries because of earthquakes, vandalism and simple neglect. Look closely at the image at the top of the story, and you’ll see how many tiles are missing from the original. Others in the story below are in worse shape.

In 1931 the Turkish government decided to turn the Hagia Sophia into a museum, and in ’35 they enlisted a team of westerners, led by the archaeologist Thomas Whittemore, born in Cambridge, Ma., to uncover and restore the original artwork.

Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Whittemore, above, was the founder the Byzantine Institute of America. The aim of the group, which first formed in 1930, was to study and preserve the great works of art from that era. In the photo on the left, he sits in front of mosaics depicting the journey to Egypt and the taking of the census. Wittemore died of a heart attack in 1950, in between the time that he was photographed and the LIFE story ran, but members of his team carried on the restoration work that you can see them engaged in below.

Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Dmitri Kessel/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The mosaics were composed of tiny tessellae, with 52,000 pieces in a square yard, placed in slow-setting plaster. The tessellae could be marble, colored stone, or glass fused with silver or gold leaf. The bottom two images show just how much of the original tile was washed away. While clearly much has been lost from the original, what remains has its own eerie power, standing as a testament to endurance.

Today the Hagia Sophia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a major tourist destination. While some of the original mosaics remain damaged, the interior gleams magnificently, and dazzles with its architecture as well as its history.

Photo by Frederic Soltan/Corbis via Shutterstock

The post Uncovering Ancient Christian Mosaics appeared first on LIFE.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Welcome to the 50s, and also the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs. The staff of lifeguards proved ready to channel their inner Esther Williams.

Colorado was full of all kinds of fun and games. At a rodeo in Ridgway, Colo., the action got a little wild, and a ride on an old-time looked a little hairy too. The train, which carried tourists along the canyon walls above the Animas River, also known as the River of Lost Souls, made the 90-mile round trip between Durango and Silverton daily, and had been featured in the filming of Around the World in 80 Days.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Looking back at car culture from those years can feel like its own kind of natural wonder—a parking lot becomes as attractive as the attraction. But then, the attractions on the trip were pretty darn good too. Below: Bryce Canyon in Utah, and then onto Yosemite, with its bears and Old Faithful.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

In this last photo, below, a family from Louisville headed out into the Idaho hills with a crew that included a cook, a wrangler, and pack mules for a multi-day trek. Their deep dive underlines the appeal of the Western United States. It’s about the breathtaking scenery, but it’s also about a journey back to a time when this country was wild.

Photo by Eliot Elisofon/The LIFE Picture Collection © Meredith Corporation

The post The Highs of a Rocky Mountain Road Trip, 1959 appeared first on LIFE.