EPA photos show Texas life in the 1970s





Many of the photos come from Leakey, a town near San Antonio that currently has a population of 425.



In this photo: Wife of an itinerant sheep shearer cooks her noon meal outside the family tent. The shearer is working on a ranch in the Leakey, Texas and San Antonio area, 1973. From 1972 to 1977, the Environmental Protection Agency hired photographers to document subjects of environmental concern. Marc St. Gil, who was born in The Netherlands but died in Katy in 1992, took these photos in Texas (plus a few in Lake Charles, La.) as part of that project.Many of the photos come from Leakey, a town near San Antonio that currently has a population of 425.Wife of an itinerant sheep shearer cooks her noon meal outside the family tent. The shearer is working on a ranch in the Leakey, Texas and San Antonio area, 1973. less From 1972 to 1977, the Environmental Protection Agency hired photographers to document subjects of environmental concern. Marc St. Gil, who was born in The Netherlands but died in Katy in 1992, took these ... more Image 1 of / 53 Caption Close EPA photos show Texas life in the 1970s 1 / 53 Back to Gallery

In the 1970s, the Environmental Protection Agency was on a mission to photographically document the "subjects of environmental concern," including those in Texas.

The DOCUMERICA Photography Project was launched in January 1972 by the EPA to archive environmental troubles and triumphs across the country. Over 70 freelance photographers were sent across the United States to record how neighborhoods and communities were affected by environmental conditions. Gifford Hamshire, the project's director, envisioned a broad scope.

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"Where you see people, there's an environmental element to which they are connected," he told the photographers, according to the Smithsonian Institution.

The photographers produced 80,000 images and 20,000 of those are preserved in the U.S. National Archives. The U.S. Archives have digitized more than 15,000 others and these can be seen in a Flickr collection.

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In 1978, the emerging result of the project was a moving, diverse, and textured portrait of America that captured a rapidly changing society, yet revealed surprising resonances to the present, according to the Smithsonian Institution.