Written on April 13, 1989, this letter was sent from second-grader Kelli Middlestead of the Franklin School in Burlingame, California, to Walter Stieglitz the Regional Director of the Alaska Region of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, lamenting the Exxon Valdez oil spill of March 24, 1989.

On January 24, 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in California. The mine pictured here is unidentified, but was probably located in California’s Sierra Nevada gold mining district.