Wasij

A stairway leads up the side of an oil tank at a refinery in San Francisco. California is second only to Texas in U.S. oil production. (For more pictures of the amazing colors of our world, buy the National Geographic book Life in Color.)

Green vegetation blooms at the river’s edge, or riparian, zone of a meandering canyon in Utah

Sisters sweep out sludge from a watering trough on their family sheep farm in Ivanhoe, New South Wales, Australia. This photo appeared in an April 2009 issue about an extreme drought, known as the Millennium drought, that affected Australia for about 15 years.

In this picture from the January 1969 issue, a pharmacy student at Oregon State University gets hands-on learning at a model drug store at the university. The wide-ranging story covered the state of Oregon, with its diverse cities and stunning landscapes.

A story in the October 2018 issue looked at Japanese-American internment during World War II. In this photo from 1942, a young woman smiles as her family enters the Santa Anita racetrack—then a temporary detention center—not realizing what was to come.

A cheetah perches on a tree trunk in the Naboisho Conservancy in Kenya. The park works to protect the species, which the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed as vulnerable to extinction.