"Boys with a Boat, Ohio River, near Wheeling, West Virginia" by Thomas Anshutz, is a cyanotype circa 1880. It is part of the Smithsonian photo collection now viewable online

The Smithsonian is a notoriously sprawling institution, whose collection of Americana, artwork, crafts, documents and other ephemera related to this messy experiment called the United States is boggling to sort through. But at least a small portion of its historic photographic collection is now viewable (in some cases, purchasable) online. The Smithsonian Photography Initiative offers a peak of the riches at a site that just went live yesterday. It serves up access to 1,800 digital images, the work of 100 photographers, who used 50 different processes, according to a Washington Post story. Gazz searched the site for anything related to West Virginia and found the above blast from the past. Says the story: "The Smithsonian was born at the same moment as photography. Then, the Smithsonian was a very modern institution and quite naturally picked up the new technology," says Merry Foresta, director of the SPI projects.