Whenever Carl Barks drew stories in which the ducks travelled to various locations, he needed to draw the proper landscapes for them. This could have been somewhat of a problem with his relatively limited access to background material; Barks travelled very little, he rarely went to the cinema, and he had no television set. But he was a longtime subscriber to The National Geographic Magazine, and from its many issues he always managed to get the required topographic basics for his stories.
Barks loved drawing exotic places and he always made sure that the locations he was drawing were as accurate as possible - given the simplified confines of comic book art. But Barks did not even have to consult his beloved magazines in order to find typical American landscapes; he lived in California with easy access to the ocean, mountains, fields, forests, deserts and cities.

Let's have a look at some of Barks' many different landscape panels of the types he drew time after time. You are only shown one picture of each type of location. Of course, Barks drew each type many, many times...