The teaching resources in this collection are a sampling of primary and secondary sources related to the history of Arlington County. These documents are arranged in the order that they might used to accompany a course in United States history to show the connection between local, state, and national history.
These documents can serve as opportunities to introduce or practice critical thinking skills. Where time is short, documents can be used to quickly present local links to broader themes.
The documents are presented as pdfs with citations including. The images are in tiffs. You can extract a tiff from a pdf if you have the software. However, making a screenshot or printing the document is probably the easiest way to access them.
Cornelia B. Rose’s Arlington County Virginia: A History is useful as a resource or more detail on Arlington history. For additional resources, Arlington Historical Magazine has articles on a wide range of local history topics. These magazine articles and their correlations to US history can be accessed on our website here.
Printing Tips
Many documents on this resource site, particularly the maps, have a lot of detail. If you don’t have access to a plotter, Adobe Acrobat Professional has a feature (print->page scaling->tile all pages->tile scale [adjust to size preference]) that allows you to print a document over a number of pages. Each page or “tile” can be trimmed and glued together. Or, you can leave the tiles as individual pieces for students to piece together as a puzzle. Leaving tiles in pieces can also slow down students’ analysis of a document and encourage them to make more observations before drawing conclusions.
Thank You! AHS would like to thank the Social Studies Office of Arlington Public Schools for their work in developing and sharing local history resources. Special thanks to Jesse Homberg for his efforts in finding these resources.
Documents with additional information
Teaching suggestions and addition resources can be found at the end of the list. Direct links to the documents can also be found in the notes section.
RESOURCES. Here are the big historical topics that we offer educational resources on. Click on any one and it will take you to the topic page with the resources, many with historic details you may find useful in your lessons.
- I. Geography
- II. Exploration to Revolution: Pre-Columbian Times to the 1770s
- III. Revolution and the New Nation: 1770s to the Early 1800s
- IV. Expansion and Reform: 1801 to 1861
- V. Civil War: 1861 to 1865
- VI. Reconstruction: 1865 to 1877
- VII. Reshaping the Nation and the Emergence of Modern America: 1877 to the Early 1900s
- VIII. Turmoil and Change: 1890s to 1945
- IX. Since World War II
Go Back to Education Page