alt.hn

2/16/2026 at 11:40:33 PM

Show HN: Scanned 1927-1945 Daily USFS Work Diary

by dogline

2/16/2026 at 11:56:39 PM

Also, just to clarify, I scanned all 7488 pages in personally (Fujitsu ScanSnap ix500). With Claude's help, I found some undocumented SANE features to auto crop and fix the scans, then had a Python script in Linux auto scan them and put them into a Postgres database as I went. Other scripts would add transcription, summaries, and auto index everything.

"mistral-ocr-latest" did really good handwriting transcription, considering how tight and small some of the handwriting is. Then back to Claude API calls to summarize by month and collect people and places from all of the entires.

Claude then created static html pages from what started as a Flask app. Published on Dreamhost.

by dogline

2/17/2026 at 12:51:42 AM

Oh boy. #3 on front page, 19k page hits in the first hour. 8243 static html pages, 15728 webp images (10k-50k each).

I've never had one of my sites with this much traffic. With everything as static files, website is still holding. Thank you all.

by dogline

2/17/2026 at 1:17:56 AM

Nice work! For others with journals in the U.S., but not feeling up to all the scanning and transcription work, I volunteer with the American Diary Project (https://americandiaryproject.com/) based in Cleveland Ohio. You can donate journals to be archived and shared. It's only been established in the past few years, and all scanning/transcription is done by volunteers, but are currently evaluating more automated pipelines like OPs. So great to see it in practice!

by jlpk

2/17/2026 at 2:03:54 AM

Imagine how much unanticipated historical perspectives might become uncovered if everyone uploaded paraphenelia of long deceased ancestors like this; after indexing, and searched as one hyper-amalgamated crowdsourced knowledge graph, can show who was where doing what in say the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s in a way that mainstream history might fall short of capturing.

by ricksunny

2/17/2026 at 12:10:01 AM

Fun fact: "Government mule" isn't just an expression, it's a real thing. And the U.S. government, including the Forest Service, still employs teams of mules to carry things to places that can't be reached any other way.

by reaperducer

2/17/2026 at 1:23:15 AM

I did a quick search, mules are mentioned 75 different times. Like this one at random from Sept 1942: https://forestrydiary.com/page/019bd90a-f176-713f-9999-b14b6...

"Fix up my packs. Load the 2 mules with 225# each. Take the 2 loads to trail camp at Lake Everett, Unload. Have lunch with the Trail cook. Haze mules & ride to 7 1/2 PM."

Horses are mentioned 2586 times. That'd be a whole study on how they're used in the back country. (Edit: horse number is inflated since part of the diary form at one point asks for "Horse Mileage". Will have to refine search).

by dogline

2/17/2026 at 12:11:24 AM

Well done! Have you uploaded these scans to the Internet Archive? If not, please consider doing so.

https://help.archive.org/help/uploading-a-basic-guide/

https://help.archive.org/help/managing-and-editing-your-item...

Trail Crew Stories and Mountain Gazette might also be interested in this.

https://www.trailcrewstories.com/

https://mountaingazette.com/

by toomuchtodo

2/17/2026 at 1:26:04 AM

Hadn't thought about it, but will take a look. Also, the two Forestry type links look very interesting. I figure there must be interest in this sort of thing - this is one resource, and the Stirling City Historical Society (Lassen NF) has a bunch of other documents I'd love to digitize soon.

by dogline

2/17/2026 at 12:46:52 AM

[dead]

by unit149