American Scraps

American Scraps

The Homestead Act

The incredible opportunity of the Homestead Act—find a nice 160-acre plot of land, get comfortable, spend five years improving it, and the government will hand you a title for it, no charge—was tempered by the sheer difficulty of really living frontier life. In his book 900 Miles From Nowhere, Steven R. Kinsella lays out some of the common, awful trials that hit Midwestern settlers: droughts, blizzards, grasshoppers, tornadoes, loneliness, and unpredictable poverty. 160 free acres may seem great, kids, but know what you’re getting into.

The estimable industrial warehouse that converts scrapped artifacts from American history into comics.

Jon White, Proprietor.
Our Founder, Jon White

An American Institution

For generations, American Scraps has pledged itself to being the finest industrial convertor of scrapped American-history artifacts. These junk deposits aren’t mere waste; they’re brimming with relevance, and only our proprietary system can turn them into comics worthy of the American Scraps™ seal. More

Our Factory

Newest Scraps

Tireless progress, week after week

American Scraps Video Mailbag No. 1
American Scraps Public Relations

Video Mailbag #1

In which our founder candidly responds to customer & investor memoranda. In this installment: what happened to Today’s Document (Illustrated), what’s going on in the R&D labs, and what did George Washington sound like?

Hi-Quality Merchandise

The American Scraps Button The American Scraps Membership Card The American Scraps Button and Membership Card
Free button & membership card with every purchase!

A Note on Sources

The American Scraps Executive Reference Library

Every American Scraps comic strip cites, links-to, and—where possible—displays a preview of its source artifact. These artifacts are all from public-domain, royalty-free sources, and are appropriate for use in the classroom. Most American Scraps sources come from The National Archives And Records Administration (NARA), whose “Today’s Document” feature was the original inspiration, in 2010, for this whole enterprise. (On a personal note, I’m grateful to NARA for the invaluable work they have done, and continue to do.)

For ease of use in the classroom—specifically grades 5–12—American Scraps organizes its material according to UCLA’s National Standards for History Basic Edition (1996), as you can see in those ten “Historical Eras” above. Learn more about the National Center for History in the Schools here.

If you’re a teacher and are using American Scraps in the classroom, I’d love to hear from you! Drop me a line at jon@americanscraps.com.

A Note on Theft

The original art you see here on American Scraps is copyrighted, and reproduction of it is prohibited without written approval.

In other words, unless I’ve told you otherwise: Don’t save or screenshot these comics for use in your own post, tweet, slideshow, or embed. Don’t “remix” or “aggregate” them. Don’t reproduce them, even in an appreciative way. Don’t sell them. Don’t drop them into a listicle called “15 Comic GIFs That Tell The Story Of American History (And You Won’t Believe #8!)”.

Instead, contact me at jon@americanscraps.com and let’s talk about your idea.

American Scraps