Old Mill

Reporting from Kennywood in West Mifflin, Pa. - With its extensive collection of turn-of-the-century rides and attractions, Kennywood in West Mifflin, Pa., is a living, breathing, trapped-in-amber ode to the "Golden Age of Amusement Parks. " Photos: Top 10 oldest rides and attractions at Kennywood As you pass through the tunnel from the parking lot to the park, you're transported back in time to a place full of memories and free of worries. Filled with vintage wooden coasters and rare old rides, the quaint and nostalgic park is the kind of place passed down from generation to generation.

At the corner of River and Montgomery streets, an egret stood in a shallow lake that shouldn't have been there. An abandoned Range Rover sat nearby, caked in mud from days underwater. The "swish, swish" of brooms sweeping pools of sludge from ruined storefronts drifted down the block. By the time President Obama visits this old mill city on Sunday, Irene will be long gone. The tropical storm roared through New Jersey a week ago, and attention quickly turned northward to the damage it wrought in green, hilly New England.

Reporting from Brattleboro, Vt. To most people, classic New England means a sleepy village with a white steepled church surrounded by farm fields. But just as typical of the region are stony old mill towns that rose in the 19th century when entrepreneurs opened clattering factories, powered by fast-moving streams, and immigrants arrived to work in them. The textile mills, trolleys and boarding houses of Lowell, Mass., on the Merrimack River about 30 miles northwest of Boston, are now part of a national historic park that tells the story of the Industrial Revolution in New England, especially its human side, while Harrisville, N.H., another erstwhile cloth-making center, slumbers, its Cheshire Mill silent but astonishingly intact.

Reporting from Kennywood in West Mifflin, Pa. - With its extensive collection of turn-of-the-century rides and attractions, Kennywood in West Mifflin, Pa., is a living, breathing, trapped-in-amber ode to the "Golden Age of Amusement Parks. " Photos: Top 10 oldest rides and attractions at Kennywood As you pass through the tunnel from the parking lot to the park, you're transported back in time to a place full of memories and free of worries. Filled with vintage wooden coasters and rare old rides, the quaint and nostalgic park is the kind of place passed down from generation to generation.

San Marino's oldest structure, El Molino Viejo, is Southern California's first water-powered grinding mill, built in the early 1800s for the San Gabriel Mission.

At the corner of River and Montgomery streets, an egret stood in a shallow lake that shouldn't have been there. An abandoned Range Rover sat nearby, caked in mud from days underwater. The "swish, swish" of brooms sweeping pools of sludge from ruined storefronts drifted down the block. By the time President Obama visits this old mill city on Sunday, Irene will be long gone. The tropical storm roared through New Jersey a week ago, and attention quickly turned northward to the damage it wrought in green, hilly New England.

Tucked away in some corner of the Directors' Guild building there's probably a long-forgotten list of Golden Rules. And one of them is sure to read: Touch not biblical epics or ye shall be smitten down by the legions of critics. Many a good director has tripped over his talent trying to breathe life into a sand-and-spear epic. It's not easy.

Every Sunday, the weavers of the Oaxaca Valley travel to the weekly market in Tlacolula to sell their handmade wool rugs. Working our way through crowded streets, past vendors selling freshly plucked chickens, exotic peppers and homemade mescal, my wife, Lietza, and I found the renowned artisans on a quiet side street.

Sturdy old mill and factory buildings, the heart of many New England communities since the Industrial Revolution, no longer symbolize dying industries. Adaptive reuse of old buildings, which began as a fad in the early 1970s, has become an economic phenomenon with no sign of slowing in New England.

LTV Steel's once-mighty Aliquippa Works, which hugs the Ohio River for seven miles west of Pittsburgh, finally is being torn down, yard by rusty yard, and union boss Rich Vallecorsa is shedding no tears. About 8,000 workers once toiled at the plant, turning limestone, iron ore and coal into America's pipe, wire and tin plate. Only about 900 workers remain in two small mills that have managed to prove their profitability in the fickle 1980s.

Tom Ratzlaff is mayor of a small town reeling from the closure of its more than 100-year-old paper mill. He's also one of the 300 workers who lost good-paying jobs at the facility. "Some days, I just wake up and I don't know what I am going to do, but you just got to keep going," said Ratzlaff, 45, who worked at the mill for three decades. "You can only cry in your beer for so long." What Park Falls faces is not new among cities with strong links to an industry that has made Wisconsin the No.

San Marino's oldest structure, El Molino Viejo, is Southern California's first water-powered grinding mill, built in the early 1800s for the San Gabriel Mission.

Drive down Coke Oven Road and you'll be on the back straightaway of the about-to-be-built California Speedway's two-mile tri-oval. Before construction can start, however, the sign that says "DANGER--Molten Slag Being Carried" must be removed. The front of the tri-oval is harder to define.

LTV Steel's once-mighty Aliquippa Works, which hugs the Ohio River for seven miles west of Pittsburgh, finally is being torn down, yard by rusty yard, and union boss Rich Vallecorsa is shedding no tears. About 8,000 workers once toiled at the plant, turning limestone, iron ore and coal into America's pipe, wire and tin plate. Only about 900 workers remain in two small mills that have managed to prove their profitability in the fickle 1980s.

Sturdy old mill and factory buildings, the heart of many New England communities since the Industrial Revolution, no longer symbolize dying industries. Adaptive reuse of old buildings, which began as a fad in the early 1970s, has become an economic phenomenon with no sign of slowing in New England.

Tucked away in some corner of the Directors' Guild building there's probably a long-forgotten list of Golden Rules. And one of them is sure to read: Touch not biblical epics or ye shall be smitten down by the legions of critics. Many a good director has tripped over his talent trying to breathe life into a sand-and-spear epic. It's not easy.

Reporting from the Northern Neck of Virginia My father's family landed in 1942 Los Angeles as if by immaculate conception, unburdened by any past. Growing up, I knew all about how my mother's grandparents came to California from southern France and Sweden. But my dad's side was a mystery. All I heard were a few stories about my grandfather as a youth in Hannibal, Mo., how he found a tarantula in a shipment of bananas at his dad's corner store, how he and a friend once rode motorcycles out west.

Tom Ratzlaff is mayor of a small town reeling from the closure of its more than 100-year-old paper mill. He's also one of the 300 workers who lost good-paying jobs at the facility. "Some days, I just wake up and I don't know what I am going to do, but you just got to keep going," said Ratzlaff, 45, who worked at the mill for three decades. "You can only cry in your beer for so long." What Park Falls faces is not new among cities with strong links to an industry that has made Wisconsin the No.