A rare specimen found on hill above Fort Riley, Kansas, 420 miles west of St. Louis, Mo.

The history of St. Louis, Missouri from 1866 was marked by rapid growth, and the population of St. Louis increased so that it became the fourth largest city in the United States after New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago. This collection includes "Pictorial St. Louis, the Great Metropolis of the Mississippi Valley, a Topographical Survey Drawn in Perspective, A.D. 1875, by Camille N. Dry, Designed and Edited by Richard J. Compton." During and shortly after the Civil War, St. Louis had suffered: cholera and typhoid in 1866. In the early 1870s, new industries began to grow in St. Louis. By 1880, St. Louis was the third largest raw cotton market in the United States with industries such as brewing, flour milling, slaughtering, machining, and tobacco processing, paint, bricks, bag, iron. Among the downsides to rapid industrialization was pollution. Brick firing produced particulate air pollution and paint making created lead dust, while beer and liquor brewing produced grain swill. During the 1880s, the city grew from 350,518 to 451,770, making it the country's fourth-largest. The Panic of 1893 and subsequent depression and the overproduction of grain hit flour milling and most industries suffered declines.

During the Civil War, photographers produced thousands of stereoviews. Stereographs were popular during American Civil War. A single glass plate negative capture both images using a Stereo camera. Prints from these negatives were intended to be looked at with a special viewer called a stereoscope, which created a three-dimensional ("3-D") image. This collection includes glass stereograph negatives, as well as stereograph card prints.