The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: October ninth, appreciating our National Historic Sites.

Since 1935, Congress has designated 123 locations across the U.S. as national historic sites. The eclectic collection is administered by the National Park Service, but rather than parks, these are time-capsules that preserve places and honor people that shaped the nation.

The sites range in size from the ruined foundation of a single building to a thousand acre estate. Some historic sites are in the middle of major cities, others in the middle of nowhere. Many consist of original architecture, while others offer accurate reconstructions.

Homes where presidents were born, lived or died are well represented, but so are residences of poets and sculptors, settlers and slaves. There are vintage railroads and early ironworks in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. More than a dozen important forts and trading posts from America's westward expansion have been preserved, along with several Native American villages. There's a battlefield from the Mexican American War and a prison camp from the Civil War. Other historic sites remind us of our own intolerances. Consider the California internment camp where Japanese American citizens were confined during World War Two, or the Kansas school-house where the battle began to end segregation in public education.

The common thread? All these sites have a distinctly American tale to tell and each presents and preserves a living link with the past from which we've come.

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