By Jason Heppler. An endless scroll through the American West in public-domain photographs from open cultural-heritage collections.
Photographs come from the Library of Congress, the Portal to Texas History at the University of North Texas, and the DeGolyer Library at Southern Methodist University, and partners across the Digital Public Library of America. Every image is public domain, is served by its holding institution, and links back to its source record.
Westward is a static site: no framework, no build step, no accounts, no cookies. A small Node pipeline queries each institution's open API — throttled to published limits — keeps only openly licensed items, and writes flat JSON; the photographs themselves are never rehosted. Set in Georgia on a prairie-night palette. Source on GitHub. Built in collaboration with Claude.