Rural communities are dispersed across the American landscape. The buildings and streetscapes in these places are a repository for visual trends—historical, architectural, and social—that relate to aspects of commercial, municipal, and private life. Rural Indexing Project (RIP) documents these trends as they exist in the built environment.

RIP originated in 2010, and continues to document locations to this day. Roughly 1,200 communities in 25 states have been documented to date, and new material is added to the site frequently. The project does not purport to be exhaustive, but instead catalogs subjects that interest the indexers.

All photos are by Zach Huelsing and Jon Lehman. Zach and Jon live in Chicago. This project is on occupied land and it is an effort to catalog the rural architecture and messaging systems that supplanted the spaces once inhabited by those who are indigenous to what is now known as the United States.