The stereoscope was the first photographic medium for entertainment to occupy the homes of Americans, before movies or television. As a young drifter, Carl Sandburg began selling Underwood and Underwood stereoscopic photographs and viewers as a door-to-door salesman in the summer of 1900. Images of recreation, travel, and foreign lands, such as the ones in this collection, introduced rural Americans to a world outside their grasp. The stereographs in this collection are in the Carl Sandburg Papers, which became the property of the National Park Service in 1968.