Carol M. Highsmith Archive photos from the 1980s

Classic town sign from upscale Beverly Hills, California

Cleaning the Minerva figure at the 's Thomas Jefferson Building, Washington, D.C

Cliffs of Capitol Reef National Park, Utah

Clear Lake Marina, Houston, Texas

Clear Creek Canyon, near Central City in Colorado's Rocky Mountains

Close-up view of the Gateway Arch, the symbolic gateway to the West (although there's a great deal of midwest to go before the west is reached) and the centerpiece of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, St. Louis, Missouri

Cliveden House, Germantown, Pennsylvania

Close-up view of pediment above main entrance, National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C

Clock in Grand Central Station commuter terminal, New York, New York

Coffee Roasters and other stores at 11th and E Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C.

Clubhouse on Jekyll Island, Georgia

Clown Casino photograph taken in the 1980s, Las Vegas, Nevada

Coit Tower and Alcatraz view of San Francisco, California

Cog railway in New Hampshire's White Mountains

Coit Tower murals, San Francisco, California

Coiled rattlesnake in brush outside San Marcos, Texas

Coastline near Big Sur, Monterey, California

Coffee bar along the highway in the Pacific northwest in Washington state

Coit Tower at dusk, San Francisco, California

Coat Abraham Lincoln was wearing the night be was shot by Booth at Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C

Clubhouse of the Jekyll Island Club, once the winter preserve of New York's Union Club off Brunswick, Georgia

Clowns and kids on Pennsylvania Avenue during an event with the clock tower of the Old Post Office Building in the background. Washington, D.C

Cluttered desk at the historic Harrison Brothers Hardware Store, Huntsville, Alabama

Close-up view of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, sculpted by Daniel Chester French, at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington, D.C

Clown face on a casino, Las Vegas, Nevada

Coffee Shop, Chicago, Illinois

Coffee Roasters and other stores at 11th and E Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C

Cluttered desk at the historic Harrison Brothers Hardware in Huntsville, Alabama, whose shelves, resembling an old-time general store, are equally crammed with an assortment of vintage as well as present-day items

Coastal mountains of central California

Collard Green Room art at Project Row Houses, Houston, Texas

Colorado's Delores River Valley in autumn

Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia

Colorful field of sunflowers near Beloit, Wisconsin

Colorado Building, built in 1922 and designed by architect Ralph S. Townsend. Washington, D.C

Colonnade at Mount Vernon, Virginia

Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum, in the old El Paso County Courthouse, Colorado Springs, Colorado

Colorful costumes at the Mummers Museum in South Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Colorful peanut vendor Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C., in the 1980s

Columbia River, Oregon

Columbarium, or a place for public storage of urns containing human remains, in San Francisco, California

Colorful Victorian home in Takoma Park, Maryland, an old "streetcar suburb" on the northern boundary with the District of Columbia

Colorfully painted row house in Denver, Colorado

Colton Hall, built in the 1840s by Walter Colton, a former chaplain who became Monterey, California's first mayor when the Americans took over the area from Mexico

Colorful parade wagon at Circus World Museum, Baraboo, Wisconsin

Colorful row houses in New Orleans, Louisiana

Colorfully painted row house in Denver, Colorado. W Maple Avenue, Denver.

Column detail, U.S. Treasury Building, Washington, D.C

Columns on the Internal Revenue Service Building, part of the Federal Triangle in Washington, D.C

Common, Cohasset, Massachusetts

Columns on the U.S. Capitol, Washington, D.C

Compass belonging to Abraham Lincoln, preserved at Ford's Theatre, Washington, D.C., where he was mortally wounded by assassin John Wilkes Booth in 1865

Community building founded by Englishmen and Americans as a colony for people of high breeding in Rugby near Nashville, Tennessee. Thomas Hughes Library.

Columns in the ruins of a destroyed southern mansion

Commercial office interior

Commercial office building

Commercial office building in Washington, D.C

Commercial office building in Rossyln, a high-rise neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia

Commercial office elevator lobby

Commercial building in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Commercial city block