About Homestead National Monument of America NPGallery Digital Archive
This Digital Archive site currently houses four park collections:
Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company Archive, 1878-2010
Charles B. Dempster founded the Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company in Beatrice, Nebraska in 1878. Dempster began making agricultural equipment for farmers and homesteaders populating the west. Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company is the longest running windmill manufacturer in the United States. The Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company archival collection consists of records related to how the company ran, the people working there, and the products they made.
Homestead NM Photo Archive
Homestead National Monument was established as a unit of the National Park Service on March 19, 1936 on the site of Daniel Freeman’s homestead. It is a site commemorating the lives and accomplishments of all pioneers and changes to the land and people brought about by the Homestead Act. The mission of the park from its enabling legislation is to be a “…monument to retain for posterity a proper memorial emblematical of the hardships and the pioneer life through which the early settlers passed in the settlement, cultivation and civilization of the Great West.”
This collection contains photographs related to all of the functions of the park. Some subjects include the buildings and grounds of the monument, construction projects, special events, and interpretive programs.
Homestead NM Museum Collection
Homestead National Monument of America has over 9,000 archaeological artifacts, over 6,700 historical objects, over 1,000 scientific specimens and over 928,000 archival documents or 580 linear feet. The collection size for Homestead National Monument of America is over 944,000 items! Historical objects range from plows to modern trapping equipment from Alaskan homesteads. There are 123 years between the first homesteader, Daniel Freeman, and the last homesteader, Kenneth Deardorff. The needs of the homesteader did not change dramatically, but the technology did.
Lillian Higgins Glass Plate Negatives
In 1899 Lillian Wilkinson, her parents, and five siblings moved to Sheridan County, Nebraska to homestead. The children continued receiving their education in Gage County, Nebraska and spent their summers in Sheridan County. After finishing her schooling, Lillian Wilkinson taught in Sheridan County, Nebraska and homesteaded on her own claim. She proved up on her claim in 1914. Three years later, she married Jesse Higgins and moved back to Gage County, Nebraska. These glass plate negatives have been reversed to show the positive print of the image. They depict life in Gage County where she went to school and later raised her family as well as homesteading life in Sheridan County. The images were primarily taken between 1900-1910.
About NPGallery
The NPGallery Digital Asset Management System is an enterprise system for storing,
organizing, and sharing photos and other digital files. NPGallery's central online repository offers
a place for the NPS to store digital assets, including photos, illustrations, audio files, videos,
and documents. The NPGallery platform lets parks and other programs easily store and organize all
of their digital files, and allows users access to easily find and retrieve specific files.
NPGallery is a premier solution for NPS parks and programs who have a need to manage and disseminate
large volumes of digital assets, with many people accessing and using those assets.
NPGallery supports a wide array of digital asset file types (images, MS office formats, adobe pdfs, audio files, videos).
Digital assets have control access to those files to ensure they are used properly.
NPGallery supports parks and programs with
digital asset hosting and delivery services.
Digital assets in the system can be provided for
public use, or locked for discovery only by internal NPS users.
NPGallery has terabytes of digital files of all types that are safely stored and quickly
retrievable for NPS business needs.
NPGallery provides a simple text search and search by state and park options,
or has the ability to “search more fields” for robust metadata searching.
Search results can be refined by filtering options.
NPGallery supports web services, support for embedded metadata, and integrated geospatial capabilities.
NPGallery also has a responsive user interface design, and the interface will gracefully
resize to match the size of the screen on your device, supporting mobile.
Web authors using the NPS.gov content management system(CMS) now use NPGallery as the
source for all photo galleries shown in the CMS.
Benefits of NPGallery to Parks & Programs
The NPGallery platform lets parks and other programs easily store and organize all of their digital files,
and allows users access to easily find and retrieve specific files.
These images and other digital assets have a direct URL link and can be used on program web pages.
Multiple file sizes of each digital asset are stored and available for use and download.
Contact the NPGallery staff to have us assist your park or program with your unique Digital Asset Management needs.
Email: NPGallery@nps.gov
NPGallery has continued working with individual parks and programs to create individual portals.
These semi-custom web pages allow NPS parks and programs to deliver digital assets from a
unique web page that highlights and shares photos, documents, audio files, and videos.
Searching the featured digital archive can be customized to help guide a user through discovering
the valuable digital assets unique to each park or program.