Nathan G. Flagg Hasan Nasser. James Howard S.S 1 Feb 2, 2023 WORD COUNTER: 287 The topic of our project is an operation conducted by the U.S navy dubbed “Operation Highjump”. It was decided that Operation Highjump would be the focus after experiencing a lack of interest in past research on the California Gold Rush. The attraction was directly connected due to the niche topic, and the involvement of the navy. By almost complete accident Operation Highjump fits into the annual theme. By definition Operation Highjump is a frontier because it is exploring uncharted territory. When first researching this almost unknown military operation it was almost infuriating how little there was about it. Either there was the wikipedia route where in it was base level information, or there were websites that appeared to have credible information but these were dated and “sketchy”. However, there was one credible, well put together, and had useful information. This was the Black Vault Documents. A collection of declassified information that is shared to the public through this medium. For my partner and I this was how a majority of our research was gathered by reading these documents. We created our project by just gathering all the information we could get our hands on, which was not much. After finding the important parts we would summarize them in a brief explanation. All this information was forwarded to a google doc. But, why is this important? Well, other than one minor agreement between a few countries, there had been zero discoveries about the Antarctic other than it being there and really cold. This was breaking boundaries by going where no one had gone before, and actually gathering data that was extremely important in both strategy and general knowledge. Before this expedition, all that was known about Antarctica was that it was a snowy desert, which is why this was so significant. This operation broke boundaries that had never even been attempted to be broken, which is why this fits this year's National History Day theme of Frontiers In History.