See What Summer Looked Like within the US in 33 Vintage Photos | Invesloan.com

The beach was historically considered part of the wilderness, Smithsonian Magazine reported, and thus an undesirable place for humans. It wasn’t until the mid-18th century that Europeans began to speak of the beach’s positive qualities and interest grew.

People have enjoyed eating outdoors for centuries, but the modern picnic basket is a relatively recent innovation, according to research librarian and food historian Lynne Olver.

“The largest [woven baskets] seem to resemble trunks, and that might be where we get the picnic hamper from,” Olver told NPR in a 2013 interview. “Picnic basket kits as we know today — having placeholders for dishes and silverware and glasses and napkins — actually begin to appear at the very dawn of the 20th century.”

A proto-version of beach volleyball originated in Hawaii, then a US territory, in 1915, Sand Court Experts reported.

A man named Jonathan DeLonge invented the inflatable version of the ubiquitous beach toy in 1938.

Beach balls were initially roughly the size of a hand, Time reported.

While sea and sand have never gone out of style, beach attire has evolved over the years. At the turn of the century, women typically wore knee-length wool dresses.

Bathing suits became more tight-fitting amid the development of the synthetic materials nylon and Lastex in the 1930s. Though men’s swim trunks have gotten less tight-fitting, they’ve largely looked the same, while two-pieces and modern bikinis became common for women by the ’60s.

People in ancient civilizations protected themselves from the sun with plant extracts and powders, according to History.com, and more modern forms of sun block were invented in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

Sunscreen was popularized in the US after Benjamin Green, a veteran and pharmacist, invented a petroleum jelly-like lotion in the 1940s, later founding Coppertone.

Another early inventor of sunscreen, Franz Greiter, created the SPF system in 1962. His own sunscreen was only SPF 2 at the time, and it would be a few more decades before higher-SPF sunscreens were common.

Although tourism was suspended in the Aloha State during World War II, Hawaii began to attract sightseers (as opposed to merchant seamen) in the 1860s, according to the University of Hawai’i Economic Research Organization.

American writer and humorist Mark Twain famously visited the archipelago — then called the Sandwich Islands — as a correspondent for the Sacramento Union newspaper. 

The Lake at Central Park first opened to the public in the 1850s, and boating became popular after it was made available in 1860, per the Central Park Conservancy.

New Yorkers have a long history of cracking open fire hydrants to cool off in the summer. The New York Times cited an article that described fire hydrants as “the lifeline of summer, spewing cooling excitement to all around it.”

The Times reported on a heat wave in 1925 in which “thousands of New Yorkers fled their homes, often with their bedding, to sleep in parks, on beaches, even in the grass by the roadside.”

That year, children opening fire hydrants became such a nuisance to the fire commissioner that he asked the police to guard them.

Back in the era when ice was regularly harvested for food preservation, people would sometimes use it to cool down as well.

In 1896, Theodore Roosevelt, who was police commissioner of New York at the time, handed out ice in alleyways next to tenement homes during a heatwave, The Times reported.

Though mechanical air-cooling techniques were used as early as 1902, they were primarily for commercial use and were too large and expensive for American homes, according to the Department of Energy.

In the 1940s, affordable window units began to be developed, and by the 1960s, central air conditioning became common in many new homes.

This 1960 concert featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra was held at the Berkshire Music Center (now called the Tanglewood Music Center). 

The legendary Woodstock Music & Art Fair — more commonly shortened to Woodstock — took place over three days in August 1969 in Bethel, New York. The event attracted about 400,000 visitors.

Recent data indicates that Americans’ reading habits have been on the decline.

Citing a study from the journal iScience, Smithsonian Magazine reported that reading for pleasure has been broadly declining since the 1940s, and from 2003 to 2023, the percentage of Americans reading for pleasure dropped about 3% each year — a total drop of 40% in that time period.

Thanks to modern medicine, the number of elderly Americans has increased in the past 75 years. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of Americans aged 65 and older was 10.7 million in 1948, rising to 59.7 million in 2024 — an increase of 457%.

Labor trends for elderly Americans have changed, too. In 1948, the labor force participation rate for people aged 65 and older was 27%. This dropped to 10.8% in 1985, but has been increasing in recent years. In 2024, the percentage had reached 19.5%.

Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York, has an iconic boardwalk. Between 1880 and World War II, Coney had the largest amusement area in the US. 

In its heyday, there were three distinct amusement parks: Luna Park (which was revitalized in 2010), Dreamland, and Steeplechase Park. 

Unsurprisingly, amusement park employment has always seen sharp spikes and drops depending on the season. In 2024, the BLS reported a 23% drop in employment in December compared to July.

A 1924 heat wave brought more than half a million visitors to the beach in one day, the Times reported.

National Geographic reported that during Prohibition, ice-cream soda was the country’s favorite beverage, with Americans eating 325 million gallons of the frozen treat in 1922 alone.

While ice cream remains a favorite for many, some data may suggest that Americans are eating less than previous generations did. Americans on average ate 18 pounds of ice cream per person in 1986, but just 12 pounds in 2021, CNN reported, citing USDA data.

The backyard grill as we know it has seen some changes over the years.

The first appeared in California in the 1930s, mostly used by the wealthy, History.com reported. It was Henry Ford who popularized charcoal grills around the same time. George Stephen, who worked at Weber Brothers Metal Works, created the first kettle grill, which became popular in the 1950s and 60s.

This pancake-flipper was at a camp run by the Madison Square Boys Club, which was a founding member of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, per the organization.

In 1964, Americans bought 5 million bicycles, double the number purchased a decade before, according to Our Bike Hub.

Danish inventor Mikael Pedersen is widely credited with inventing the first publicized tandem bicycle in the late 19th century.

Basketball went from being a little-known sport at the turn of the century to one of the most popular sports in the US by 2000.

Playgrounds weren’t common in the US before 1900, per Playworld. This would soon change, with the US reaching over 5,000 playgrounds by 1924. The trend would continue, with more being built by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression and other play structures being built in the 1950s and ’60s.

Summer camps were introduced in North America in the 1880s as a product of the “back-to-nature” trend, a movement gaining traction in an increasingly industrialized world, Slate reported.

Open from 1881 to 1889, the camp was founded by Dartmouth student Ernest Balch, per the Lake Winnipesaukee Museum.

Throughout the USPS’ history, it’s used a handful of methods to deliver mail. Steamboats and stagecoaches were common methods at first, followed by railroads and automobiles.

Admiral Farragut Academy, a military academy and prep school, operated a summer camp at its campus in Pine Beach, New Jersey. 

Although the Garden State school closed in 1994, the Academy still operates its second campus in St. Petersburg, Florida, according to the academy.

The Epworth League, a Methodist youth association, operated day camps for city children, according to Case Western Reserve University. One of the organization’s camps was located in Jamesport, New York, on Long Island. 

They were developed by the National Park Service as “Recreation Demonstration Areas.” 

New Hampshire, which has 944 lakes per the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, remains a go-to destination for fishing enthusiasts.